Word: novels
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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McKay is not the only half-truth in the novel; Louis Agassiz, a Harvard professor in the 1850s and the national biologist in a golden age of zoology, plays a small but acidulous part in the book. "I have been accused of character assassination," McMahon says, "but in fact his character is a lot worse than I said. He was famous for exploitation of the young people in the museum, for signing his name to their work. The accusations came so credibly and so often, that even his biographer concluded there is a lot of truth to them...
...artists' nature to be agents of change, to transform the world. they are apprentices of freedom." Nadine Gordimer states this credo clearly, but proves it by her fiction. Burger's Daughter, her latest novel, which was banned until last week in South Africa, presents a passionate argument for social and political change...
...passionate and inspiring as her novel is, Gordimer emphasizes that the way Rosa chooses is not necessarily hers. "I haven't got the Rosa kind of commitment--it would be terrible to let you think that of me. It's kind of a holy mystery to me, that commitment. What makes them absolutely sure they couldn't live any other...
Rosa finds it impossible to live with herself on any other terms, but Gordimer has chosen a path she lambastes in her novel--moral but not overtly political commitment. "There is an uneasy middle ground. I know because I live on it," she says. "You take all kinds of stands that you find ridiculous later. For a long time, I refused to own a house because I felt badly about owning something blacks couldn't. But every time I travel--on a segregated bus--or go to any cinema. I'm doing things blacks...
Gordimer says she foresaw political harassment over Burger's Daughter, her most political novel to date. She included in the text of the novel a banned document from the Soweto riots in 1976. "I took certain liberties and I was afraid the government would ask themselves was she one of them? (Communists). She must have had access to early documents, perhaps...