Burger's Daughter

by Nadine Gordimer

As a depiction of South Africa, this novel is more revealing than a thousand news dispatches as it tells the story of a young woman cast in the role of a young revolutionary, trying to uphold a heritage handed on by martyred parents while carving out a sense of one's self.

Genres: Fiction, Africa, South Africa, Nobel Prize, Historical Fiction, Literature, African Literature

361 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer, political activist, and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".

Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes.

Reviews

[Sawsan · Rating 4 out of 5]

نادين جورديمر من أهم كُتاب أفريقيا
كانت من أقوى الأصوات المناهضة لنظام التمييز العنصري في جنوب أفريقيا
مواقفها وأعمالها الأدبية ضد كل أشكال العنصرية والعنف والظلم والممارسات اللاانسانية
تعرضت للاضطهاد من حكومة الأبارتايد, ومُنعت الكثير من أعمالها لسنوات طويلة
كتبت رواية ابنة بيرجر بعد انتفاضة سويتو التي استمرت 6 شهور ضد النظام العنصري
تحكي حياة روزا الفتاة البيضاء ابنة الطبيب المناضل ضد سياسات الفصل العنصري
والحيرة بعد وفاة والدها في السجن بين الاستمرار في المقاومة والنضال أو الاستقرار في أوروبا
تُصور جورديمر الحياة في بلدها وتعرض نماذج للعديد من الأفكار والشخصيات
وينتقل السرد طوال الرواية بين روزا بيرجر والراوي في أزمنة مختلفة

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

What would you do if you were me? What is to be done?

Don't read this if you don't like politics, experimental writing, breaking down academic jargon to the bare necessities, candid displays of brutality and bodily functions of the female sort, and complete and utter lack of book-bound solutions for book-invoked problems. For those of you who require more holistic commitment and saviourless methodologies than the likes of 1984 and Brave New World can offer, read on.

...he won't scruple to invoke Kierkegaard's Either/Or against Hegel's dialectic to demonstrate the justice of segregated lavatories...

Don't say I didn't warn you.

The kind of education the children've rebelled against is evident enough; they can't spell and they can't formulate their elation and anguish. But they know why they're dying.

That fact is that the majority of people who read this book on Goodreads will be white. There are variations of privilege in being white, but on the whole, should a white person's car stall while in the middle of a white neighborhood in Detroit, they upon asking for help at a nearby house will not be shot in the back of the head. I use this analogy grounded in the United States to explicate the contents of this book concerned with South Africa because while the United States is all I know, it was enough to teach me the difference between my words of understanding and others' lives of being a long time ago. It's a lesson that must be refreshed every time, all the time, for the ideological indoctrination comes in many forms and the books like this that survive them are few.

One of those eager souls who see no contradiction in their protest that they are not at all 'political' but would like to do something effective—something less self-defeating than charity, for what (euphemism being their natural means of expression) they call 'race relations'.

The term 'code-switching' focuses on the minority, whatever dialect or modicum of expression that is inherently less powerful due to pomp and circumstance. Those who attempt to refute their physical privilege and the need for 'switching' entirely make the mistake of believing they can prove their claim through living, as if their lives were their own to do with what they will. Death is not an equalizer so long as history chooses the heroes.

I know plenty blacks like Burger. It’s nothing, it’s us, we must be used to it, it’s not going to show on English television.

What this book is concerned with is a matter of existing with the least amount of blood on your hands. That's all. That's it. Now, there is plenty of social theory involved in that question, plenty of stories of those who have gone before, plenty of family and friends and peers and privileges to demarcate, explicate, perhaps even the boogeyBOSS of a Cthulhu government that will pull you into confrontation without the need for a single finger of effort on your part. There is the reality, there is the cause, and then there's you, and if you happen to be white in South Africa, not only could you flee through the favor of government that looks like you, your life would be the one applauded.

The old phrases crack and meaning shakes out wet and new.

Congratulations. You have been absolved of your guilt by resembling the powers that be. How does that feel?

There was no way of identifying one’s white face as one that was different from any other, one that should be spared.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't do anything. I let him beat the donkey. The man was black. So a kind of vanity counted for more than feeling; I couldn't bear to see myself - her - Rosa Burger - as one of those whites who can care more for animals than people.

A novel with real moral weight and substance as Gordimer offers up an uncompromising and sometimes uncomfortable (in the best way) exploration of what it meant to live within the white supremacist apartheid regime. In prose which thrilled me for its force and intensity, this is preternaturally acute and intelligent (e.g. the debates about political philosophy and forms of Marxism), while also being emotionally affective, though not in any kind of easy, simplistic sense.

If race is one factor subjected to a 360 degree stress test, then gender is another, as Rosa (named for Rosa Luxembourg) has to explore questions of identity and how to come to a sense of subjectivity and self that can accommodate her, however partially or problematically, within a patriarchal system that pre-defines her as a white anti-apartheid hero's daughter.

The textual shift between 'her' and 'I' encodes this struggle, with assured use of 2nd person at times, and sections that could be biographical or journalistic viewpoints offering up other gazes that attempt to pin down Rosa Burger as her father's (and mother's?) daughter.

It would have been very easy for a book set against apartheid-era South Africa to slip into sentimentality, hand-wringing 'liberal guilt' and platitudes but Gordimer is always robustly in control and unafraid to challenge all our terms of reference: to what extent is even a passionate white revolutionary still inflected by the systemic and systematic inequalities of race and class that underpin both capitalism and racial hierarchies and segregation? What does parenthood look like in a revolutionary household, and how does political commitment play out in a father-daughter relationship? How does a girl grow into womanhood in this artificial setting of police surveillance, house arrest and detainment? What does it mean to love under these conditions?

Unaccountably, this is my first book by Gordimer and I was staggered by her mastery of both literary form and political content, her fiery intelligence, her unforgiving and forensic observation. If this were the only book she'd ever written, I would already have understood that Nobel Prize.

After Annie Ernaux, Gordimer is my second great author (and both female) discovered in 2021 - what a reading year (already)!

[E · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to enjoy this so much more than I did. A story nearly strangled by apartheid written by an author with an indisputable knack for conveying tension in its many forms showed so much promise. But the stream of consciousness had me reading in circles. Even the dialogue became tedious as irregular punctuation obscured the sequence of speakers. The protagonist was too detached from all the other characters for my taste, preventing me from empathizing or understanding anyone in any profound sense.

I'd like to maintain hopes for Gordimer's other work, but this experience has left me wary.

[Dagio_maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Ma ti è stata data la possibilità di scelta?
Pensaci.”
“Sì... se vuoi vederla così...
E invece no! Rosa! Quale scelta? Rosa?
In questo paese, sotto questo regime, vedendo come vivono i neri...
cosa c’entra la scelta con i genitori?
Cos’altro potresti scegliere?”




Pubblicato nel 1979,La figlia di Burger, non sfuggì alla censura sudafricana che dal 1963, grazie al Publications and Entertainment Act (inasprito nel 1974), bandì circa 20.000 opere, accusate o sospettate di essere lesive per la dignità e la sicurezza della stato.

Sospettato di promuovere idee comuniste e di favorire pericolosi risentimenti, il romanzo fu passato al setaccio da altri esperti letterari per essere poi riammesso alla pubblicazione.
Questo cambiamento di posizione si deve al fatto che fu giudicato un libro troppo difficile da leggere per diventare un best seller!!!
Per inciso, la difficoltà oggettivamente c'è.

In realtà, la storia di Rosa Burger, ha differenti modalità di lettura.

Ma, innanzitutto, chi è Rosemarie Burger?

E' la figlia di Lionel Burger personaggio basato sulla figura reale dell'attivista afrikaner (e avvocato di Nelson Mandela) Bram Fischer, condannato all'ergastolo nel 1966.

Il romanzo, dicevo, si può leggere in modi differenti:

- come la storia di una ragazza che cresce come riflesso di ciò che il padre è stato (un massimo esponente del Partito Comunista Sudafricano) e quindi una ricerca di identità;
- come la storia del pensiero e dell'azione della via sudafricana al comunismo (partito messo al bando nel 1950);
- come la storia delle diverse prospettive attraverso le quali si può vivere la relazione tra bianchi e neri;
- come la storia di padri che sacrificano la loro vita per il Futuro e di figli che si trovano eredità a volte scomode.


Si parte da questa immagine:

”Nel gruppo di persone in attesa davanti alla fortezza c’era una ragazzina nell’uniforme gialla e marrone della scuola. Aveva in mano un piumino verde e una borsa rossa per l’acqua calda, che teneva per l’anello. A quel tempo certi autobus facevano ancora quella strada, e i passeggeri, guardando fuori avranno notato una ragazzina. Questa poi, una ragazzina: deve avere qualcuno là dentro. Chi è tutta quella gente, a proposito?”


Sono parenti che si accalcano davanti alle porte della prigione per consegnare qualcosa ai detenuti. Una scena consueta in quegli anni e che troveremo sviluppata nel romanzo in differenti modi e da parte di persone diverse.

Una cosa è certa: l’apartheid è un peso che incombe su tutti.
C’è chi lo ha voluto; c’è chi preferisce non guardare; c’è chi che non può rimanere con le mani in tasca.
Rosa racconta come è stato crescere tra persone e discorsi che non hanno voluto sottrarsi ed hanno portato la questione razziale su un altro livello: la lotta di classe.

”Una malattia non riuscire a ignorare quella condizione che permetteva una vita sana e normale: la sofferenza degli altri.

Colpisce il fatto che non ci siano descrizioni di brutalità ma allo stesso tempo, queste, siano enfatizzate da un unico atto.
C’è solo una scena, difatti, dove entra in campo la violenza ma, al contrario di ciò che ci aspetterebbe, non è quella di un bianco contro un nero, ma di un uomo di colore che picchia un asino.
Gran parte dell'orrore di questo passaggio non deriva dalla brutalità dell'uomo e dalla sofferenza dell'asino, ma dall’impotenza che blocca Rosa.

Che fare? è la solita domanda.

Scappare, restare a guardare o agire?

Un testo che contiene tantissime citazioni di attivisti, molte non riconoscibili proprio per essere inserite in modo camuffato nel testo.
Un'opera di grande calibro che mi è piaciuta molto ma non la consiglierei a cuor leggero.


"Non si può disertare.
Non conosco l’ideologia:
Si tratta di sofferenza.
Come porre fine alla sofferenza.
E finisce nella sofferenza. Sì, è strano vivere in un Paese dove ci sono ancora eroi. Come chiunque altro, io faccio quello che posso. "

[Corey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank god this book is over. It was fascinating as a work of historical fiction on apartheid-era South Africa, and as a character sketch of someone who was born into the upper echelons of White anti-apartheid society but who lacked her own strong convictions on the topic. Otherwise, Nadine Gordimer lost me completely with her stream-of-consciousness-style narration and lack of a coherent plot. I can appreciate her beautiful use of language, but 360 pages of not understanding what’s going on tends to be a bit much. I lost concentration and patience at around page 200 and came to the conclusion that if I skipped 100 pages, I wouldn’t miss much. I still, however, read the first sentence of each paragraph, enough to know that the protagonist, Rosa Burger, had moved to Paris, was hanging out with pretentious French people and schtupping a married man. So… yeah… I can’t say that I regret skimming over the details as I had really picked up the book to learn a bit more about the life and legacy of Bram Fischer, and the glory days of South Africa’s Communist Party and I couldn’t give a f*** about Hemingway style ex-pats… a topic which has always elicited simultaneous boredom and disgust from me, although I can’t really explain why I hate it so much.

Here’s an example of how awesome this book could have been (p.79):
“But this death was the mystery itself. The death you were talking about; in the cottage. Circumstantial causes are not the cause: we die because we live, yes, and there was no way for me to understand what I was walking away from in the park. There was no way to deal with this happening but to gather the little plastic-foam tray and cellophane from which I’d eaten my lunch and go over and put it, as every day, as everyone else must, in the waste bin hooked to a pole. The revolution we lived for in that house would change the lives of the blacks who left their hovels and compounds at four in the morning to swing picks, hold down jack-hammers and chant under the weight of girders, building shopping malls and office towers in which whites like my employer Barry Eckhard and me moved in an ‘environment’ without sweat or dust. It would change the days of the labourers who slept off their exhaustion on the grass like dead men, while the man died. The children the white couple would make in their whites’ suburb would not inherit the house bought on the municipal loan available to whites, or slot safely into jobs reserved for whites against black competition. Black children – it was promised – would not have to live off the leavings we threw into the bin. Eckhard’s clients would no longer get rich by the effort of a phone-call to authorize a sale on the stock exchange. All that might change. But the change from life to death – what had all the certainties I had from my father to do with that? When the hunger ended and the kwashiorkor was wiped out as malaria was in the colonial era, when there were no rents extorted and no privately-owned mansions and cosy white bungalows, no white students in contemplative retreat where blacks could not live; when the people owned the means of production of gold, diamonds, uranium, copper and coal, all the mineral riches that had rolled to the bottom of the sack of Africa – one would be left with that. Nothing that had served to make us sure of what we were doing and why had anything to do with what was happening one lunchtime while I was in the square. I was left with that. It had been left out. Justice, equality, the brotherhood of man, human dignity – but it will still be there, I looked away everywhere from the bench and saw it still, when – at last – I had seen it once.”

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives a reader two things—a description of life in South Africa during the 1960s and 1970s and a study of a white Afrikaaner female raised by parents martyred in their fight for the anti-apartheid movement. Will her parents’ goals, aspirations and battles become hers?

The description of life is well drawn. The central protagonist’s search to find herself is ordinary, probably because I never came to feel attached to her as a person.

While I do like Nadine Gordimer’s descriptive prose depicting how people and places look and the atmosphere of an event, I do not like how the telling of events abruptly flips from one topic to another without warning. The flow is choppy, confusing and disorienting. One minute we may be following a conversation, the next we are in the central character’s head, following her internal thoughts and observations. There are switches in time too. For much of the first half of the book, I felt the story was going nowhere, except perhaps in circles, returning over and over again to topics covered previously.

Although this is a book about the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, it is not one that in depth teaches South African history. The telling is too jumbled for that!

The audiobook is narrated by Nadia May. Her narration is very good with believable intonations of both Blacks and Whites. Her narration I have given four stars.

The fictional story does little for me, but Gordimer’s ability to capture the feel of a time and place is well done.

****************

July's People 3 stars
Burger's Daughter 3 stars
No Time Like the Present TBR

[Kiran Dellimore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burger's Daughter is an authentic portrait of life during Apartheid South Africa, written from the perspective of the daughter of a White, Afrikaner freedom fighter, named Rosa Burger. Her heritage makes her an outcast in White society in South Africa, while her skin color means she can never be fully accepted in the 'struggle' by Blacks. As a result of this Rosa undergoes a metamorphosis as she stumbles through life, from one lover to the next, trying to find her own identity, outside the shadow of her father's. Yet as she goes through this journey of self discovery she also learns many things about her father, which she never knew and which make her realize that she is indeed more like him than she once thought. Gordimer's prose in Burger's Daughter is exquisite, especially her capturing the subtle nuances of Afrikaner and Black South African culture and language. In fact, I would argue that to fully appreciate the mastery of this work one needs to have been immersed in South African culture. Otherwise it is difficult to grasp the meaning of many idioms and terms (such as kleintjie, baasie and so forth), or to follow the phrasing, that Gordimer skillfully employs in the dialogue between various characters. Burger's Daughter is also quite an intellectual novel, which touches on a broad spectrum of topics ranging from apartheid and communism to black consciousness and pieds noirs in France. The only minor critique I have is that it took a few chapters to get accustomed to Gordimer's writing style in Burger's Daughter. In the beginning I found the long, blurry, run-on sentences and constantly shifting perspectives from the narrator/observer to Rosa a bit jarring. Nevertheless, Burger's Daughter deserves a place on your reading list as a modern classic.

[Tamara Agha-Jaffar · Rating 3 out of 5]

A young school girl waits outside a prison in South Africa. This scene opens Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer, the 1991 Nobel Prize winner in literature. The girl clutches a hot-water bottle and an eiderdown to be delivered to her mother inside the prison. The girl’s name is Rosa Burger, the daughter of Lionel and Cathy Burger. Both her parents are white anti-apartheid activists seeking to overthrow the South African government. Rosa has grown accustomed to seeing her parents and their colleagues under constant surveillance and/or incarcerated for their political activism.

The novel follows Rosa’s life as she tries to come to terms with her parents’ legacy. We meet her at the age of 26, over a decade after the opening scene. By this time, her mother has died of illness. Her father has also died of illness while serving three years of a life sentence for treason. The novel primarily consists of Rosa’s internal monologues in which she talks to her father or her former lover, Conrad. These monologues are interrupted occasionally by the omniscient narrator.

Rosa’s monologues reveal what it was like grow up in a household bustling with anti-apartheid activism. She was called upon to contribute to the cause in various ways, but her attitude of being thrust into a political movement is ambivalent at best. She is under surveillance by the authorities, so is cautious about her activities. In spite of that, she maintains some contact with her parents’ political acquaintances although she behaves like a disengaged observer. Eventually, she is able to obtain a passport, visits her father’s first wife in France, and has an affair with a Frenchman. She goes to London and then returns to South Africa after an unpleasant encounter with a former childhood friend. The novel ends with her imprisonment.

Gordimer weaves references to the political upheavals in South Africa, the strikes, the Soweto uprising, as well as the activities of actual prominent anti-apartheid activists, many of whom are mentioned in Rosa’s monologues. This gives the monologues the air of authenticity. But the monologues are stylistically challenging; the stream of consciousness style confusing. Sometimes it isn’t clear whether Rosa is speaking to her deceased father, her former lover, herself, or the reader. The monologues, which can extend for a couple of pages without paragraph divisions, include a plethora of names and complex political discussions. Since the speakers are not always identified and the dialogue is reported in indirect voice, it can become somewhat tedious. The temporal shifts and flashbacks without warning contribute to the confusion.

The style may be an attempt to reflect Rosa’s confused attempts to forge a separate identity for herself within her parents’ circle of politically committed activists. Although lucid and thought-provoking passages dot the landscape, the novel generally lacks coherence and fails to generate interest in the protagonist’s fate.

Recommended with reservations.

My book reviews are also available at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com

[Gisela Hafezparast · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nadine Gordimer is one of my favourite writers, as she manages to describe and explain difficult issues and situations not only around the apartheid struggle in South Africa, but also the difficulty of life in the country for South Africans sympathetic or active in the struggle. Her books are very political, but they do not preach or force her opinion on you. Especially in this book her writing reminds me of one of Simone de Beauvoir describing her life.

In Burger's Daughter Gordimer describes how the daughter of a courageous white communist freedom fighter, brought up and immersed in the political life of her parents and their friends, struggles to find a place in this complicated society and country. Whilst she clearly believes in the same values as her parents she struggles with everybody's assumption that she would continue in their line of action. A visit to Europe and especially France, with its easy political freedoms as well as a love affair with a french academic and a chance encounter help her to clarify her mind. For me the book is a very moving struggle of a young women to find her own way of life together with excellent desciption not only of South African history but also that of French socialism.

Many people seem to find the fractures style of writing difficult as it jumps between description, personal though and conversations with three important characters of the story, but I can't say it worried me. On the contrary it helped to both see how Rosa Burger sees herself and her situation and how others might have viewed her. I have read books before mainly about the struggle of black people, their destiny and testimony, but this is the first book I have read from a white South African's point of view coping and hoping to change the country. Even if aiming for the same course, this of course is struggling from very different bases, rights and especially legal and societal protection. Very complicated and as the after apartheid area shows something which still affects the country now.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in this area, as it is written by a South African whilst it was going on. It is very truthful in my opinion and not sentimental, but informative.

[Nana Fredua-Agyeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nadine Gordimer's Burger's Daughter is not an easy read. The author, probably mirrored the lives of the people: natives and the whites who were against the apartheid system at the time, in her prose. For reading this seemingly melancholic novel, the reader would feel the desolation, the destruction, the emotional torture, the emasculation of ideas and of works, the impotency of one filled with verve without a vent or valve. The reader would go through several tortuous moments, reflecting the lives of a people who would not bend to division, destruction and death no matter how well it is shrouded and how white the shroud is. And these feeling of pain, emanating from the book, does not result from the use of verbose adjectives or adverbs but the use of language itself. The pain is in the read. In this book, Gordimer, somewhat answers partly a question that has been bothering some observers of South African apartheid system and which was also the centrepiece of Steve Biko's I write What I like; the question of whether the South African Liberals, those who vociferously and vituperatively spoke against apartheid, were for real and why they never forwent the privileges that were preserved specifically for them. Fictitious as this story may be, it still shows that there were several white South Africans who were willing to brave death to see the collapse of that vile and humongous system than to live and partake of it.

continue here http://freduagyeman.blogspot.com/2012...

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

At what point do you choose what you are already born into? Gordimer explores this puzzle in her densely lyrical novel, spinning out a fictional life for a fictional daughter of a fictional white anti-apartheid activist in 1970s South Africa. The daughter's ambivalence about having been born into a family committed to the cause, her clear-eyed assessments of the tensions and fault lines within the movement, and her memories of what happens to a family constantly struggling against society are what make this book worth it. But often the truth that this book has to tell is plastered over with Gordimer's impressionist language. I'm guessing the choice of styles is supposed to dramatize the conflict between a unique and individualized interiority (expressed through the romantic linguistic style) and a social movement that can't take such individualism into account. But -- it tried my patience.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a disappointment. I had high expectations, because Gordimer is a Nobelpricewinner and any book on the apartheidsregime in South Africa must be interesting. But after 100 pages, I quit reading. The story on Rosa Burger, daughter of white communist activists against apartheid, did not appeal to me. I just could't get into the story: the writing was too dispassionate and also difficult by the continuous shifting of perspectives and time. I guess Gordimer tried to present to us the difficulty a child has finding its own way, especially when dealing with family members that have chosen a very clear and dangerous path in life. Interesting indeed; perhaps I have to retry later on.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This heavy, complex novel is a paean to the hard-core leftist anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and as such, it was banned in that country when it was first published in 1979. A political activist herself, Nadine Gordimer was intimately connected to South Africa’s struggles, and she intended the book as a “coded tribute,” in her words, to the activist Bram Fischer, Nelson Mandela’s treason trial defense lawyer. (Meanwhile, a copy of this novel was smuggled to Mandela in prison. He reportedly liked it.)

The plot follows Rosa Burger, daughter of white Afrikaner parents who have been imprisoned for trying to overthrow the government. As a reading experience, I’ll confess that it’s not exactly enjoyable. Gordimer’s prose is wild and dense, and I found the jumping back and forth between first-person and omniscient narration jarring (instead of cool and innovative). I got lost a lot, in other words, but I liked it most when I let her insane prose roll over me like a tidal wave.

I agree with an early critic of the novel who said that it “gives scarcely any pleasure in the reading but which one is pleased to have read nonetheless.”

[Thomas Tibbetts · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really thought this was gonna be a two-star read during the first half because I just couldn’t seem to get interested or focused on what was going on. I think it only picked up for me later because I had finally acclimatized to Gordimer’s writing. She made a lot of decisions that, to me, have intellectual value but unfortunately make the actual reading kind of a slog. Still, by the end I was able to appreciate this book on a level of being invested in its characters and conclusion. It also helped that I came around to seeing that this book explored many sensitive ideas very well, avoiding pitfalls like being preachy or pathetic about it.

Burger daughter when she meets hot dog son idk

[Whisper19 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mean I get it, but why? Just why?

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Burger's Daughter" is set in South Africa during the dying years of Apartheid and white rule. The protagonist Rosa, named after the famous Communist writer Rosa Luxembourg, is the daughter of Lionel Burgher a prominent Afrikaans leader of the movement to implement black majority rule. Lionel will be imprisoned and die while incarcerated. Rosa will thus grow up as the daughter of a prominent martyr.
Having neither friends nor family outside of the movement, Rosa first considers it natural that she also be active in the struggle against apartheid. However, she starts to wonder if the white regime will be ever be overthrown. She is distressed to see that those in the movement seem to be quite happy to die fighting for a hopeless cause.
She appeals to a prominent supporter of the Apartheid regime for a passport so that she can travel in Europe and think about her life. The individual who reminds the reader of Satan tempting Jesus agrees to help telling Rosa that once she sees life on the other side, she will understand that the Afrikaaners have a God-Given mission to build a different, dynamic society in their homeland. In France, Rosa is tempted a second time. She becomes the lover of an academic for whom opposition to the Apartheid regime is a necessary and a safe requirement for anyone wishing to pursue a career as a French university professor. The professor would like Rosa to stay in France and lead a safe middle class existence with him. However, Rosa travels to London where she meets a young black man that had lived in her house for a number of years. Rosa considers herself to be his sister but the young black man wants no part of the Burgher family. He explains that while the movement belongs to blacks it is the whites who get all the glory.
After this unpleasant confrontation with her brother, Rosa decides not to return to her lover in France, but instead go back to South Africa where like St. Peter she will join the ranks of the martyrs.
The plot structure for "Burger's Daughter" is simple and highly effective. The strength of the novel is however the remarkable detail and authenticity of Gordimer's description of life inside the white section of the movement for Black majority rule in South Africa. What is particularly commendable is the manner in which she explains the close links between the Communist Party and the movement for Black rights. All the white characters begin as communists. Fighting Apartheid is a mere extension of their commitment to the worker's struggle. However, without every abandoning communism, they become troubled by the events in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. At the end, the fight against Apartheid has become their first cause.
While the structure of the novel requires that Rosa must go back to South Africa in the same way that St. needed to return to Rome, Gordimer provides a second explanation for her conduct. Rosa is very simply a "Daddy's girl". She abandons her lovers with ease. None compare to Lionel her beloved father. Abandoning Daddy's cause is simply not an option for Rosa.
"Burger's Daughter" will be a great delight for any reader interested in either the struggle for Black majority rule in South Africa or left-wing politics in the 20th century. It is also a very good novel about the devotion of a daughter for a father. Following Rosa's life journey however is not a cheerful experience. Unlike the martyrdom of St. Peter, her demise provides no reason for celebration. The reader simply wonders if Rosa loved Daddy too much.

[Brenda C Kayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A painful story of a South African woman whose life depicts the ultra-discomfort of being between-a-rock-and-a-hard place. Her dilemma is much more excruciating than most people. She must make the decision as a young adult to follow in the harrowing and often humiliating life of her deceased, activist parents or whether to reside in the safer world of the intellectual expatriot.

Before one can judge her should she choose the safer less altruistic route, the devastating social structures of arpartheid (the book was written in 1980 when things seemed quite hopeless)are chillingly brought to bear. In her case, she is white and has spent her entire existence in an integrated setting that, of course, among South African whites is looked upon with derision.

The activist role is put upon her as a teenager when she is expected to marry someone who has been imprisoned, thereby legally enabling her to visit him. She would therefore be a message bearer, keeping communications of the movement alive. Her reflection on the expectations of her fulfilling that role is perhaps pivotal in what she decides to do.

Although she grows up without prejudice, she does not have the same commitment and urgency as her parents, and seems to be resentful of what has been put upon her. Nevertheless, this is what has been handed to her and she does come to make a decision based on her heritage.

A fully realistic book that helps the non-South African to get a more detailed picture of the complex and appalling difficulties of apartheid.

[Constance Devanthery-Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book many years ago when it was first published. I myself was coming of age, though on the other side of the world from South Africa, and the power and rawness of the story, along with the writing, rocked my world. Recently I saw the book on a used bookshelf and challenged myself to read it again. I wondered whether it would still move and impress me. The answer is yes, and then some. This book is a masterpiece. It not only provides a riveting, first-person account of life in the South Africa during apartheid and within the antiapartheid movement, but it brings it into sharp focus through a painful coming-of-age narrative, told with brutal honesty. The writing is dense and challenging, but at the same time tender and sensitive. Gordimer demands the reader's full attention, and she rewards it. The book moved me to tears at moments, and thrilled me at others. I am sorry to have finished it, but I look forward to reading it again in another twenty years.

[Andrés · Rating 3 out of 5]

No es un libro para un lector principiante ya que es complejo en su estructura y narración. Nadine Gordimer toma a la hija de un comunista entregado a la causa de los africanos frente al sistema de opresión (Apartheid). Desde sus ojos cuenta lo que ocurre detrás del telón, sus padres, y amigos de estos organizados para luchar contra el gobierno afrikaner. También el legado ineludible que lleva en la sangre y, a pesar de una resistencia pasiva, este la encausa de nuevo en la lucha, no sólo por el deseo intrínseco de un futuro mejor, sino porque no reconoce, en ella misma, otra forma de vivir.

[Baran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hab das Buch genossen. abgesehen von dem mittleren Teil in Frankreich, wo nichts passiert außer, dass Rosa Bernard kennenlernt

[svnh · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is incredibly dense, but beautifully written, once you adapt to gordimer's style, which she forces you to do with her brutal talent.

it's a good read for someone constantly struggling with the question of what to do with social injustice, especially when it is legally sanctioned--of how to reconcile the personal and political, or how to admit all of your contradictory parts.

[Pragya · Rating 2 out of 5]

As much as I love Gordimer's stories and her writing, this book was a task to finish. Her style of writing in this one made it difficult to understand even though the book and its plot had great potential. I had a hard time finishing it just for the sake of finishing it.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful, memorable, character based novel about living in apartheid South Africa during the 1970s. Rosa Burger is in her mid 20s. She is a single white woman whose parents were white communist activists. Rosa’s father, a doctor, believed the blacks in South Africa should be in control of the country. He was imprisoned for his subversive activities and died in prison.

Rosa lives a fairly solitary life and through her family connections is able to leave South Africa for one year. In France she lives for a time with her father’s first wife. Rosa whilst in South Africa and overseas, is under South African government surveillance, because her parents were political activists. She must be careful with whom she mixes, being careful not become politically active as there is always the threat that she will be imprisoned.

There is little plot momentum. This is a book about apartheid, civil unrest, and the influence of family.

This book was first published in 1979.

[Kristel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A story set in South Africa in the sixties and seventies and tells the story of Rosa Burger, daughter of Lionel Burger. Rosa’s parents were Afrikaner Marxists and political activists who opposed apartheid. Rosa loses both her parents to the political struggle. Her dad died in prison. Rosa has no identity of her own and she has no private life. Everything for Rosa is “because I am my father’s daughter” pg 62. He role is imprinted on her. The book explores the impact of apartheid on the people of South Africa. And the society that is racially divided. Rosa discovers that the blacks don’t what the solutions of “well meaning whites”. “ Blackness is the blackman refusing to believe the whiteman’s way of life is best for the blacks. Pg 163” Early in the book, Rosa states in her head that “desire can be very comforting”, she would like to live life without social responsibility and be anonymous like other people. She eventually does get to leave South Africa where she looks for a way to escape her father. She spends some time in France and England only to return to South Africa and her role of ‘her father’s daughter’.
I’ve read a few books about South Africa now and this is not one I would favor. It just was not that fun to read. The story is told through internal monologue as Rosa converses in her thoughts with Conrad, her father or other people. I gave it three stars but really I hovered over 2 stars for awhile. Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.

[بسام عبد العزيز · Rating 1 out of 5]

كان من الصعب جدا أن أتابع القراءة مع أسلوب الكتابة المتقطع هذا الذي تتخذه الكاتبة..

أتفهم فكرة أن تنتقل الكاتبة بين الماضي و الحاضر في فقرات قد يكون هناك رابط ما بينها.. لكن مشكلة الكاتبة أنها لا توضح أبدا متى بدأ الحديث عن الماضي ومتى انتهى..
مثلا تجد نفسك أثناء القراءة لا تدري مثلا كيف كانت البطلة و أبيها في زيارة للأم في السجن و في نفس الفقرة تكون الفتاة في السرير مع شاب التقته مصادفة أثناء عودتها من محاكمة أبيها!!!!

لا أعلم هل الترجمة هى التي فشلت في توضيح الفوارق بين الأحداث أم أن الرواية الأصلية هى نفسها التي تعاني من هذه المشكلة لكن في الحالتين وجدتني مشتتا تماما لا أستطيع معرفة أين يحدث لمين في أي وقت!!

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Impenetrable is the best way to describe this book. The dialogue, the political events, even the characters' motivations. I often found that I had read whole paragraphs without really understanding the meaning. Who is talking? Why are they saying this? What South African political party are they describing? I hope the book club discussion sheds some light on this one for me!! :) Without it, I'm afraid that this book didn't really speak to me, despite the worthy plot.

[Subhasree Basu · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 30%.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer's Burger's People (1979) is a superb novel about the collateral damage to family members of activists. But, from our vantage point as readers in the 21st century, knowing just how long it took for apartheid to be dismantled in South Africa, and knowing also that it is on the verge of being a failed state, it is also deeply sad.

The novel is the story of Rosa Burger, named by her idealistic, Marxist parents after the revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg. The focus is on her struggle to find an identity after both her parents are dead, when she is emotionally adrift yet expected by all sides to continue her parents' efforts to subvert apartheid in South Africa.

The novel begins with a vivid image: a fourteen-year-old girl in her school uniform, standing in a queue of others waiting to visit their loved ones in prison.  She is bringing blankets and a hot water bottle to her mother who has been detained in a brutal dawn swoop.

The child was dry-eyed and composed, in fact she was an example to us all of the way a detainee's family ought to behave.  Already she had taken on her mother's role in the household, giving loving support to her father, who was all too soon to be detained as well. On that day he had put others' plight before his own, and had been tirelessly busy ever since his own wife had been taken in the early hours of the morning, going from police station to police station trying to establish for helpless African families where their people were being held.  But he knew that his schoolgirl daughter could be counted on in this family totally united and dedicated to the struggle.  (p.12)

That passage, however, is in Italics, indicative of a feature of this novel: the different narrative voices.  Sometimes it is Rosa's first person stream-of-consciousness voice, addressing other people in her life: her lovers, or her father, or her father's first wife.  Sometimes it is a pseudo-objective sympathetic third person narrator, and sometimes that narrator reproduces the cynical, sarcastic voice of the authorities whose job it is to sabotage everything the activists try to do.  Direct dialogue is rare: it is nearly always reproduced by someone else, often interrupted by what others said.  Sometimes it takes a while to work who is who and where they are.

Rosa adapts without fuss to this shocking event — her mother in a notorious prison —  because she has been raised in the expectation that both her parents might be in prison at the same time.  She has grown up in a political atmosphere, where the house if full of banned people flouting the bans, people on bail, spouses suddenly single and not always just temporarily. They have ways of subverting the segregation laws; they have exits from the house that the surveillance teams don't know about; and Rosa, from a young age, has learned the art of not answering questions, deflecting topics she doesn't want to discuss, keeping her face blank and devoid of any expression that might reveal things that must be kept secret.

So it's not a normal childhood though she always knows that she has privilege because she's a white South African.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/07/29/b...

[denudatio_pulpae]

Lionel Burger to szanowany lekarz, członek Południowoafrykańskiej Partii Komunistycznej, czołowy przywódca ruchu walczącego z apartheidem w RPA. W związku ze swoją działalnością zarówno on jak i jego żona zostają aresztowani i osadzeni w więzieniu, co skończy się dla nich tragicznie. Osierocona Róża Burger będzie musiała zmierzyć się nie tylko z własnymi bolesnymi wspomnieniami, ale również ze spuścizną po słynnym ojcu oraz oczekiwaniami, jakie ma w stosunku do niej społeczność.

Bardzo trudna książka, przepełniona wątkami politycznymi, o których tak naprawdę nie miałam większego pojęcia, co niestety utrudniało mi odbiór. Trudno mi było wczuć się w historię Róży, zrozumieć jej postępowanie, jej życiowe wybory – była dla mnie postacią z zupełnie innego świata.

Nie oceniam, ponieważ czuję, że powinnam jeszcze kiedyś wrócić do tej książki, żeby ją lepiej zrozumieć.