Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story: A Critical Study

Nadine Gordimer is the winner of the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature. Her works, spanning more than five decades, relentlessly expose the traumas and tensions of apartheid in South Africa. My Son’s Story (1990) marks a shift in her focus from concern with the role of whites in a sharply polarized society to the experience of those on the other side of the colour bar. Her study of the psychological dilemmas faced by a coloured family and the heavy price paid by those involved in the anti-apartheid struggle, is a haunting indictment of an unjust and oppressive system. The present work offers a detailed analysis of this novel, which generally has been labeled ‘difficult’ and opens up rich insights into Gordimer’s mind and art.