Living in Hope and History: Notes on Our Century - Hardcover

Gordimer, Nadine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747544719 ISBN 13: 9780747544715

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1999

Synopsis

This collection of essays, articles, critiques and addresses extends over four decades, and includes the author's Nobel Prize lecture of 1991. Her themes are wide-ranging, moving from the impact of technology on our world-view to the convergence of the moral and the political in fiction.

About this title

Review

"Nothing I write in such factual pieces will be as true as my fiction," Nadine Gordimer asserts in the opening essay of Living in Hope and History. It's hard to think of any line that would inspire less confidence in a book of nonfiction. But the author, after all, is a Nobel laureate, an antiapartheid activist, an African National Congress member and a public figure of unimpeachable moral seriousness--and her warning is no piece of postmodern playfulness. Instead she means to draw an important distinction between genres. Nonfiction, in Gordimer's view, issues from her own political agenda, while her transcendent aim in fiction is to represent the way things are. The two impulses may overlap, of course, but they are seldom congruent. She's quick to acknowledge that writers can't truly escape politics, nor would it be desirable if they could. Still, writes Gordimer, "the transformation of the imagination must never 'belong' to any establishment, however just, fought-for, and longed-for."

What this collection offers, then, is not art itself but the record of one woman's fierce dedication to both her art and her politics--and her attempts to negotiate the relationship between them. Living in Hope and History includes graduation addresses, lectures, the author's Nobel acceptance speech, impressively learned essays on Josephnter Grass, and even her correspondence with Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe. Dating from the dark old days of apartheid through the present, the assemblage also offers a moving document of the South African struggle and its eventual fruits. Some of the most exhilarating pieces chronicle the new, postapartheid nation--"The First Time" finds Gordimer standing in voting queues for her country's first democratic elections, and "Act Two: One Year Later" is a celebration of Johannesburg's newfound vibrancy. Living in Hope and History is first and foremost a record of Gordimer's life as a public figure. In these essays, however, the political and the imaginative seem to sound a common, joyful note: this is the way things are, this is the way things should be. --Mary Park, Amazon.com

Review

"Nadine Gordimer [is] one of the grand chroniclers of the era...[She] gives the power of voice to a world where history so often seems to stamp out hope."--Jill Piggott, "The Boston Globe Review" "Gripping and important...A rare glimpse of the crumbling of the last bastion of colonialism, told by a writer of consummate skill."--Steven Harvey, "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" "Gordimer has undoubtedly become 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 can retain political faith; they can believe and create. This is an important message for all aspirant writers of the next century."--"The Independent" (London)

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0747544719
• ISBN 13: 9780747544715
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Calder Liz