A Study Guide for Nadine Gordimer's "Town and Country Lovers"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Nadine Gordimer's "Town and Country Lovers," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535841474

Book preview

5

Town and Country Lovers

Nadine Gordimer

1980

Introduction

Published in Nadine Gordimer’s 1980 short story collection, A Soldier’s Embrace, Town and Country Lovers is like many of the author’s works in its depiction of strained race relations in South Africa. Gordimer often writes about the daily lives of people, both black and white, who are affected by the restrictive measures taken by the government during apartheid. In this story, she shows the devastating consequences of violating the legal and societal rules about interracial relationships.

Author Biography

Nadine Gordimer, the second daughter of Isidore and Nan Myers Gordimer, was born in Springs, a small mining town outside Johannesburg, South Africa, on November 20, 1923. Her father was an immigrant Jewish watchmaker from Lithuania, and her mother came from a middle-class British family. When Gordimer was eleven, her parents took her out of the school system because of a minor heart condition. Lonely without her peers, she compensated by reading. In 1945, she attended the University of the Witwatersrand for a