16th July 2014 A world without books is an empty world indeed and so whenever a writer passes away, the world loses more than just a human being.
Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize winner and anti apartheid speaker has passed on. She was aged 90 and died peacefully in her home in the presence of her children.
Nadine Gordimer was born in 1923 and published her first short story in 1939, when she was 15. In 1953, she published her first novel writing days and went on to write 12 more.
She was a loud voice against apartheid in South Africa, often using her writing to condemn the system and explains her reasoning as simple as this “I would have been a writer anywhere, but in my country, writing meant confronting racism.”
In 1962 Nadine Gordimer helped to edit Nelson Mandela’s famous I am prepared to die speech; no wonder that she was one of the first people the leader saw when he left prison in 1993. In 1991, Nadine Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for literature; she has also received 10 honorary doctorates in literature.
Her beliefs were strong enough for her to risk her safety, and the world is no doubt a more conscious place because of her.