About this title: In this work, Nadine Gordimer unfolds the story of a young woman's slowly evolving identity in the turbulent political environment of present-day South Africa. Her father's death in prison leaves Rosa Burger alone to explore the intricacies of what it actually means to be Burger's daughter.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking Books
Date Published: 1979
ISBN-13:9780670194759ISBN:0670194751
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Ex-library. Nice hard cover, lightly read, acetate over dust jacket, library stamps & stickers, front flap cut off dust jacket & taped inside cover, stk #2571b9. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 361 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1980
ISBN-13:9780140055931ISBN:0140055932
Description: Very Good. GREAT BOOK! CLEAN PAGES, NO SPINE CREASES & MODERATE WEAR ON COVER. "Description: In South Africa, where Blacks and whites are caught in the winds of change, a young woman tries to uphold the radical heritage she received from her martyred parents while carving out a sense of self. " read more
"While I was reading this book, I didn't find myself very impressed by the writing. I found the story sort of confused and difficult to follow because the point of views shifts and the first-person portions are, by design, confusing. Somehow, the story really got in my head, so I have no choice but to conclude that the author's decisions in crafting the novel worked. But, I'm not sure that, in the end, I really understand Rosa's journey or where she's ends up. I sort feel like I need to read it over again to really get it, now that I have a better idea of what might be important."
"Classic Gordimer. Terrific in cutting to the heart of S. African dilemmas as they touch daily life--all the tough issues, psychologically very interesting, if I'm remembering right."
"I've never read Gordimer before, aside from a short story in an anthology, so it's hard for me to say whether or not this is representative of her other novels and stories.... but it sure felt idiosyncratic, and brilliant, and wonderful.
Burger's daughter concerns Rosa Burger, daughter of famous white political activist Lionel Burger who dies in jail opposing apartheid. The novel, really, is this super-dense and involved exploration of the psychology of the daughter as she tries to work her way through her political commitments, to see if there is a way to live a satisfying and politically-engaged life-- or if the two are mutually exclusive. It's one of those novels that probes very deeply into the consciousness of the main character, to the point where there is a fair about of formal experimentation, in terms of how things are presented in the book as filtered through the consciousness. But it's readable, of course, and if it reminded me of anyone, it was Henry James, the way his late novels sort of tracked the progress of a mote of dust across the mind of one of his characters. This has that kind of feel, I think James called them "reflectors," that you see and experience all action as if its reflected off of their slightly dinged-up surfaces, and Gordimer's novel has some of that.
Of course, it's more contemporary feeling than James is, and the concerns here are much more immediate, and more legitimately counter-cultural than James ever managed-- this is a novel that feels deeply committed to political struggle, however much it remains a struggle for the character to be engaged. It's really very good, and I can only imagine what it must have been like to read this when it came out in the late-seventies when Apartheid was still in force. Then, I think, it would've been a committed act of writing as political struggle, too, in contrast to now.
"This is a really amazing book about a girl living on the edge of the two torn worlds of pre-Apartheid South Africa. Beautifully written from both Rosa's (the title character's) point of view and from that of a third person narrator it gives a scope of a very complex situation as well as a very compelling plot about the development of a girl away (and eventually back to) the ideals of her parents. I was a little freaked out by how much I identified with the main character."
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