Nadine Gordimer

(1923 - 2014)

When Nelson Mandela was released from Robben Island Prison in 1990, Nadine Gordimer was among the first people he asked to see; he had read her banned novel Burger’s Daughter while in jail. When they met, she later said, “it was not about my book that he spoke but about his discovering, on the first day of freedom, that Winnie Mandela had a lover.” Gordimer was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1991.