Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Special Commissioned Entry on Nadine Gordimer, Judith Newman - Nadine Gordimer's Era

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NADINE GORDIMER'S ERA

GORDIMER'S COUNTRY

To understand the context in which Gordimer began writing it is important to recognize the peculiar history of South Africa, a history fought over and continuously rewritten by the different groups within the country's boundaries. During the apartheid era, South African historical propaganda tended to advance the view that the whites reached South Africa before the black inhabitants, or, more moderately, that the two groups got there together. Many histories of South Africa need to be treated with great caution. One useful account is that of Charles Van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, which is particularly relevant to the area in which Gordimer grew up. Leonard Thompson's A History of South Africa can also be recommended. In The Seeds of Disaster, John Laurence gives an excellent account of Afrikaner propaganda and doublespeak.¹ Heidi Holland's...

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1. Introduction
2. Chronology
3. About Nadine Gordimer
4. Nadine Gordimer At Work
5. Nadine Gordimer's Era
6. Nadine Gordimer's Works
7. Nadine Gordimer As Studied
8. Further Reading
9. Copyright

1. Nadine Gordimer