Five books in celebration of Nadine Gordimer

The Nobel Prize Winner for literature who died on July 14, 2014 at the age of 90 was one of my favourite writers. In fact, I fell in love with the short story collection, Some

Monday for Sure as an undergraduate first year student at the Ahmadu Bello University in 1979. I became a short story writer because of her. I may have already had it in me, to write short stories that is, but I was galvanised and encouraged to flower in the form because of her phenomenal short story prowess. Her short stories are full of passion, nimble and draw you in, making the characters so believable, you are certain you have met them before. Nadine Gordimer was that good at bringing situation alive and humanity to the fore. She stared apartheid in the face in her writings bringing us the horror of the system in such harrowing words, we drowned in them. We were so touched we wanted to go to South Africa on foot and fight the perpetrators of apartheid with our bare hands. Nadine Gordimer was that good at bringing situations alive and humanity to the fore. In 2006 she visited Nigeria to celebrate the 20 years of the Nobel Prize in literature award given to professor Wole Soyinka, I could not go to Ife but Dr Wale Okediran, former president of ANA kindly took my questions to her and she responded with her antique typewriter. No fancies, no airs. The result is an essay in my book, In the Blink of an Eye titled, “In the hands of Nadine Gordimer”. Nothing has ever given me more joy. Self-effacing, Spartan and an elegant writer till she passed on, here are some of her books to celebrate her and to reintroduce one of Africa’s finest writers , anti-apartheid activist and a dear comrade in arms to Madiba to you all. I present them to you from my Nadine Gordimer’s collection. Enjoy. (1) Let me start with the last book I bought just before her demise. Living in Hope and

history by Nadine Gordimer is a collection essays on post -Apartheid South Africa, her interesting relationship with politics and a bit on the Apartheid years. She delves into politics, literature, writers and morals. The independent writing in the blurb of the book comments “Gordimer has undoubtedly became one of the world’s great writers… her rootedness in a political time, place and faith has never dimmed her complex gifts as an artist, her partisanship has not compromised her artistic distance. Great writers cannot retain political faith, they can believe and create. This is an important message for all aspirant writers of the next century’’. As modest as ever, Nadine Gordimer describes this impressive volume as “a modest book of some of the non-fiction piece I’ve written, a reflection of how I’ve looked at this century I’ve lived in’’. This as far as I am concern.