Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer, in 1992: “How many French people read books by black French-speaking writers?”

Interview Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1991, the South African novelist (1923-2014), anti-apartheid activist, explained to “New Observer” how to reconcile political struggle with her “selfishness” as a writer.

From 10 to 13 February, a colloquium was held at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare, the capital of the country, jointly organised, under the auspices of UNESCO, by the Zimbabwe National Commission for UNESCO, the University of Zimbabwe and International Pen. Some forty participants, mainly literature professors from all over Africa, discussed the theme: “Main aspects of African poetry and the novel in‘dawn of the 21st century‘ century “. The debates, often austere, were illuminated by the interventions of two of the (too rare) writers present at this meeting: two South Africans, Nadine Gordimer (whose Christian Bourgois is preparing to publish “Histoire de mon fils”) and Mongane Wally Serote. A white woman and a black man, activists of the ANC, the African National Congress, committed body and soul to the fight against apartheid and to the construction of a finally human future for their country. When Wally Serote, who is head of the ANC’s cultural affairs department, spoke, the air changed in density. Fascinated, we listened to this man – who fought for years, arms in hand, in the bushes of Botswana or Angola against the South African army – explain, speaking of his brothers in arms, that the time had come “to tell these warriors that their struggle is changing form […] and [notre] hope is to develop a culture of tolerance”. It is the same calm determination expressed by Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize winner for literature, whom we met on this occasion.

The new observer. You once wrote: “I did not have the courage, and I still do not have the courage, to be completely revolutionary, to face the possibility of life imprisonment. I had the writer’s egoism. » Do you still have it?

Nadine Gordimer. Oh, sure. I’ll have it all my life. Especially because I’m a woman. With a family – children, husbands, lovers – finding time and peace for…