Gordimer, Nadine

1923 – She was born on the 23rd day of November this year in Springs, Gauteng, Johannesburg, South Africa. She was educated at a Catholic convent school, but was largely homebound, as a child because of her mother's "strange reasons of her own" apparently, fears that Gordimer had a weak heart.

1937 - She began writing at an early age, and published her first stories in at the age of fifteen.  Her first published work was a short story for children, "The Quest for Seen Gold”.

1948 - She did not complete her degree, but moved to Johannesburg in this year, where she has lived ever since.

1949 – She wrote her first fiction “Face to Face” in this year.

1951 – The New Yorker accepted her story "A Watcher of the Dead", beginning a long relationship, and bringing her work to a much larger public.

1953 – Her first novel, The Lying Days, was published in this year.

1954 – She married Reinhold Cassirer, a highly respected art dealer who established the South African Sotheby's and later ran his own gallery; their "wonderful marriage" lasted until his death from emphysema in 2001.

1961 – She had begun to achieve international literary recognition, receiving her first major award in this year. She also won the Booker Prize for her 1974 novel, The Conservationist

1988 – She wrote her latest short story “The Moment Before the Gun Went Off”.

1991 – She won this year’s Nobel Prize in literature.

• "Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb."
• "The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think."
• "A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice."