I could not make it to Ile-Ife, where the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) had organised a colloquium on 20 Years of the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Professor Wole Soyinka In 1986. Several phone calls and a few messages after, ANA President Dr Wale Okediran, accepted to do me a favour.
Winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for literature, 83 year old Nadine Gordimer, still writes in gripping text… and we are left to enjoy her never ending short stories… Her poignant essays, enchanting novels and her ethereal collection of short stories “Some Monday for sure” in the Heinemann Africa series opened my eyes to this South African literary giant in 1980. I soaked her up, read her, travelled with her in apartheid South Africa, joined her in the mines and cried with her in “Ah woe in me.” Her sad tales of black South Africans had me thinking she was black until many years later when I discovered she was a white South African of Jewish and Latvian descendants. But the images that she crafted in her writings never left me, as a result of which I am a Gordimer collector –from Telling tales – a collection of short stories from some of the world’s best (including our own Chinua Achebe) to her latest offering The pickup, I have them all.
Holder of fourteen honorary doctoral degrees, Gordimer was born on the 20th of November 1923 at a small mining town in South Africa. She won the W.H. Smith Common wealth prize in 1951 and the Booker prize in 1974, among several other international awards. She also won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991 and then clinched the National Arts award in 2000.
As Ife eluded me, I put pen to paper to see if I could get to know Mme Gordimer better. Dr. Okediran hand –carried my questions to Ife to the grand dame of literature who promptly responded to them by mail upon her return to South Africa.
To the question, “How did you become a writer?” she replied “By being an avid reader from the age of six.” Her mode of writing is by the use of an electronic typewriter. Her advice to upcoming writers was straight to the point.
Read, read, read, instead of watching television.
For Nadine Gordimer, she writes better in the morning. Telling tales is an intriguing collection and a book that everyone must read; an arresting array of short stories which must not be missed. I fell in love quite easily with Chinua Achebe’s “Sugar Baby”, an early short story about the difficulty for some in doing without sugar during the Nigerian civil war. Then there is screenplay genius, actor and maverick, Woody Allen, in a deeply engaging story of a child’s rejection from pre-school…
Telling tales transports every reader to new places of wonder via the story teller, from Salman Rushdie to Nobel Prize winner Gunter Grass. Ms. Gordimer herself, aside from editing the collection contributes to it with her tale of a family fleeing from war through a park in a short story titled “The Ultimate Safari.” …when I asked her how she got such formidable writers to accept to do the collection, here is her reply “some of them are my comrades, others were those I didn’t know personally but whose stories I admire. All responded because it was an opportunity to support HIV/AIDS sufferers.”
Ms. Gordimer was in the forefront of the anti-apartheid campaign through her writings and her policy of staying at home at the height of the apartheid regime. I ask her if she is satisfied with the way things are going in South Africa, with the democratic space, especially since she was part of the struggle. In response, she says she considers herself “a realistic optimist”. “We have many problems to face” she adds, “housing, education, unemployment which I see you have on a huge scale in Nigeria- but we are tackling them. South Africa has been free of the apartheid regime for only just a decade.”
I return to her writing, any family members writing? The answer is sadly, “No”.
Nadine Gordimer advises writers not to think about Prizes. “Write,” she says, “If you have talent, you will find a publisher. Do not think about prizes, it won’t bring them to you. To the question, “How do you convert short stories to novels?” her answer was very straight “short stories don’t convert to novels.”
Nadine Gordimer says she was surprised when she won the Nobel Prize.
With thirteen novels under her belt, 12 short story collections and an immeasurable number of essays and screenplays. Ms. Gordimer remains a woman of intimidating credentials. Decorated by the French Government, the Cuban Government and the Chilean government, she has received several international awards. Nadine Gordimer is also a recipient of the order of the Southern Cross, South Africa. She is a fellow of the Royal society of Literature England and Vice president, PEN international, with many other fellowships and honorary memberships.
Eugenia Abu
