Burger's Daughter

✍ Scribed by Gordimer, Nadine

• Publisher: Penguin Group US
• Year: 1979
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 259 KB
• Edition: Penguin Books (1980)
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 1101571055
• ASIN: B006G12K8C

✦ Synopsis

{ Oct 2020 - Verified ebook for complete book description, cover, table of contents, content separation, and epub format error checking. }
Kindle Edition, 368 pages
Published 1979
Penguin Books (1980)
Callil-Toibin 200 Best Novels in English (1950-1999)
This is the moving story of the unforgettable Rosa Burger, a young woman from South Africa cast in the mold of a revolutionary tradition. Rosa tries to uphold her heritage handed on by martyred parents while still carving out a sense of self. Although it is wholly of today, Burger's Daughter can be compared to those 19th century Russian classics that make a certain time and place come alive, and yet stand as universal celebrations of the human spirit. Nadine Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born and lives in South Africa.
Rosa Burger grew up in a home under constant surveillance by the South African government. Her parents were detained for their political beliefs; her father died in prison, and her mother, whose health suffered from her time in jail, eventually dies. Rosa, a white South African in her early 20s, is left the only surviving member of her family. Yet even after her parents' deaths, the history of their anti-apartheid beliefs and practices have a daily impact on her life: it seems everyone has expectations of her and the government is still watching.
A quiet, private person, Rosa constantly searches her memories to find herself, to grasp this heritage that weighs her down. Over a period of several years Rosa comes to understand the impact of the South African political climate on her and how she became who she is. The narrative style varies from straightforward storytelling to Rosa's most personal thoughts. In Burger's Daughter, Nobel Prize-winner Nadine Gordimer takes a situation most read about in newspapers and makes it real, creating a memorable story of coming to terms with circumstances over which we have little control, yet which directly affect our lives. --Holly Smith