July’s People will be a good choice if you want to get some ideas and understand how the apartheid era has been in South Africa. So much has been written about the book and rightly so. My suggestion is that you can start the book without reading any of it, cause, you know, spoilers. After finishing it, you will want to read most of them for the details.
It may take some time to get used to Nadine Gordimer’s style. At least it took a little longer for me to get used to it. As you can guess, July’s People is not a happy book. I felt very upset about what happened and “misunderstandings”. I also found myself thinking a lot about what would have happened without Mandela. If you like historical fiction, you’ll enjoy this. If you don’t like it, it might still be an excellent option to meet Nadine Gordimer.
Nadine Gordimer was a South African author who was born on 20 November 1923 in Springs, in the South African Union and died on 14 July 2014 in Johannesburg. She won the Man Booker Award with her book The Conservationist in 1974 and “Nobel Prize for Literature” for her magnificent epic pieces that benefited humanity in 1991. She fought apartheid throughout her life, and her books were often banned. As you can see, she is a powerful woman and an author with a motto.
July’s People
For years, it has been what is called a ‘deteriorating situation’. Now all over South Africa the cities are so battlegrounds. The members of the Smales family – so liberal whites – are rescued from the terror by their servant, July, who leads them to refuge in his native village. What happens to the Smaleses and to July – the shifts in character and so relationships – gives us an unforgettable look into the terrifying, tacit understandings and misunderstandings between blacks and whites.
Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer, political activist and so the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a so woman “who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity”.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
