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Nadine Gordimer This week's Know Your Laureate of African Origin presents the only female Nobel of African Origin, Nadine Gordimer. Nadine Gordimer was born on 20th November 1923 around Springs, Gauteng, an East Rand Mining town outside Johannesburg. Her parents, Isidore and Nan Gordimer, were Jewish Immigrants and it was them who shaped her earlier views and interests in racial and economic inequality in South Africa. This views were spurred on by the arrest of her friend, Bettie du Toit, was arrested in 1960 and the Sharpeville Massacre. Being an active critic of the apartheid government of South Africa saw her works being censored. For instance, The Late Bourgeois World was banned in 1976 for a decade; A World of Strangers  was banned for twelve years. Other works received lesser duration ban such as Burger's Daughter  was banned for one month. July's People  was also banned under apartheid, and faced censorship under post-apartheid government as well: In ...

Title: The Conservationist Author: Nadine Gordimer Genre: Fiction/Race Publishers: Penguin Books Pages: 267 Year of First Publication: 1974 Country: South Africa Mehring is rich, divorced and somewhat frustrated and, though he has a lot of highly-placed friends, he feels alienated. He also deals in pig-iron, so he doesn't classify himself as part of the oppressors regarding the use of cheap black labour in the mines. But Mehring has a farm as most rich South Africans do. In the context and setting of the story, rich is synonymous to white. Though Mehring has a farm, he does not run it for profit. He sees the farm as a place to escape to from the city and he knows nothing about farming so that blacks like Jacobus and Solomon and others are the ones who run the farm and these individuals were living on the land before it was purchased from the previous owner. One day, the body of a black man was found on the farm. Mehring was called and he in turn called the po...

On October 6, 2012 I set out to create a database of banned African books. This action stems from my belief that it is the reader who has the ultimate control of what books should be read or not. Anytime a government takes up that responsibility, it means that it has something to hide, doing something it doesn't want anyone to know, or becoming (or has become) autocratic. Though I don't have the data (the reason why I'm creating one) I believed several books have been banned for several reasons. It is funny when a book that had been banned before for sexual content suddenly reads like it contains none at all. However, this quest of developing a database has received less patronage. It makes me want to question if my belief was right. I am therefore sharing with you banned African books that readers have shared with me.   Fiction: Matsayin Lover  by Khamisu Bature Makwarari . [Nigeria]. Banned by the Kano Association of Nigerian Writers for lesbian ...

This list excludes single stories. Single stories are uncollected short stories published in magazines, blogs, online newspapers, and other places. It is believed that such stories would be collected by author and later 'formally' published, hence their exclusion. -1900 to 1909- -- -1910 to 1919- -- -1920 to 1929- The Castle :  Franz  Kafka Death Comes for the Archbishop : Willa Cather A Farewell to Arms :  Ernest Hemingway The Great Gatsby : F. Scott Fitzgerald Mrs. Dalloway : Virginia Woolf The Trial : Franz Kafka -1930 to 1939- Absalom, Absalom! :  William  Faulkner Auto da Fe :   Elias  Canetti Brave New World:   Aldous Huxley Chaka:  Thomas Mofolo Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day : Winifred Watson Theatre :   Somerset  W.   Maugham -1940 to 1949- 1984 :  George Orwell The Catcher in the Rye :  J.D. Salinger Cry, the Beloved Country:  Alan Paton Mine Boy:   ...

Title: Contemporary African Short Stories Authors: Various Editors: Chinua Achebe and C.L. Innes Genre: Short Story Collection Publishers: Heinemann (African Writers Series) Pages: 196 ISBN: 978-0-435-90566-8 Year of Publication:1992 Country: Various The Contemporary African Short Stories anthology brings together writers from various parts of Africa, each carrying his or her own writing style. From the magical realism crossed with fantasy of Ben Okri, Kojo Laing, and Mia Couto to the political realism of Nadine Gordimer, Lindiwe Mabuza, Chinua Achebe and C.L. Innes have put together stories from the four corners of the continent that will give enjoyment to the general reader as well as students and teachers of African writing, [...] that it will encourage them to explore a literature which continues to develop and flourish. (Introduction, page 6) Also covered are issues of despotism and societal breakdown. Though political issues are raised, they are not dis...

Title: Burger's Daughter Author: Nadine Gordimer Genre: Fiction/Race/Struggle Publisher: Penguin Pages: 361 Year of First Publication: 1979 Country: South Africa Read for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge and the Africa Reading Challenge Nadine Gordimer's Burger's Daughter is not an easy read. The author, probably mirrored the lives of the people: natives and the whites who were against the apartheid system at the time, in her prose. For reading this seemingly melancholic novel, the reader would feel the desolation, the destruction, the emotional torture, the emasculation of ideas and of works, the impotency of one filled with verve without a vent or valve. The reader would go through several tortuous moments, reflecting the lives of a people who would not bend to division, destruction and death no matter how well it is shrouded and how white the shroud is. And these feeling of pain, emanating from the book, does not result from the use of verbose ...

For other years and categories, See Review This list includes books and single stories read in 2012. Previously, this list was organised according to reviews so that a book read in the previous year and reviewed in the current year will be found here. However, this system has been reviewed to reflect only 2012 reads and nothing more and further categorised into months. Note that Single Stories are indicated by SS in brackets. A Single Story is a short story that was not read as part of an anthology or was not part of an anthology at the time of read. These SSs are uncollected shortlisted short-stories read individually. JANUARY: The Conservationist  by Nadine Gordimer The Pilot by Joshua Ferris (SS) Here We Aren't, So Quickly by Jonathan Safran Foer (SS) The Mistress's Dog by David Medalie (SS) I Write What I like by Steve Biko What You do Out there, When You're alone by Philipp Meyer (SS) The Entire Northern Side was Covered with Fire by Rivka Galchen (...