Telling Times
Writing and Living, 1950-2008
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- 12,99 €
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- 12,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Nadine Gordimer's life reflects the true spirit of the writer as moral activist, political visionary and literary icon. Telling Times collects together all her non-fiction for the first time, spanning more than half a century, from the twilight of colonial rule in South Africa, to the long, brutal fight to overthrow South Africa's apartheid regime and to her leadership role over the last 20 years in confronting the dangers of AIDS, globalisation, and ethnic violence. The range of this book is staggering, from Gordimer's first piece in The New Yorker in 1954, in which she autobiographically traces her emergence as a brilliant, young writer in a racist country, to her pioneering role in recognising the greatest African and European writers of her generation, to her truly, courageous stance in supporting Nelson Mandela and other members of the ANC during their years of imprisonment. Given that Gordimer will never write an autobiography, Telling Times is an important document of twentieth-century social and political history, told through the voice of one of its greatest literary figures.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Politics and literature intersect in this comprehensive sometimes too comprehensive collection of nonfiction writings by the Nobel Prize winning South African novelist and antiapartheid activist. Covering five decades, these short pieces run the gamut: autobiographical sketches; chiaroscuroed travelogues that wander from the Congo to Cairo; literary essays on novelists from Tolstoy to Chinua Achebe and Philip Roth; profiles of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu; op-eds on issues like AIDS and water shortages; the odd dispatch from the Cannes film festival and a retrospective on the 20th century. At the vital core of the volume are Gordimer s gripping reports from the battle against apartheid, in which she dissects the hypocrisy and brutality of South African racism and ponders her responsibility as a white liberal minority within the minority. The more polished of these pieces brim with subtle insights and evocative landscapes and characterizations. Others, culled from after-dinner speeches, letters, and other odds and ends, have a tossed-off feel; the tome is large enough to require and reward judicious browsing. At its best, Gordimer s writing is both consummately artful and deeply engaged; she shows us that the truth isn t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
