Burger's Daughter (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: black miners, Lionel Burger, Rosa Burger, Madame Bagnelli (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Rosa Burger grew up in a home under constant surveillance by the South African government. Her parents were detained for their political beliefs; her father died in prison, and her mother, whose health suffered from her time in jail, eventually dies. Rosa, a white South African in her early twenties, is left the only surviving member of her family. Yet even after her parents' deaths, the history of their anti-apartheid beliefs and practices have a daily impact on her life: it seems everyone has expectations of her and the government is still watching. A quiet, private person, Rosa constantly searches her memories to find herself, to grasp this heritage that weighs her down. Over a period of several years Rosa comes to understand the impact of the South African political climate on her and how she became who she is. Take time to read this novel; the political realities it describes are complicated. The narrative style varies from straightforward storytelling to Rosa's most personal thoughts. In Burger's Daughter, Nobel Prize-winner Nadine Gordimer takes a situation most read about in newspapers and makes it real, creating a memorable story of coming to terms with circumstances over which we have little control, yet which directly affect our lives. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith

Product 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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Cover Worn edition (November 20, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140055932
• ISBN-13: 978-0140055931
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #587,746 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finding one's own voice, September 12, 2000

By	EriKa "E" (Iceland) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

I have probably by now read almost everything Gordimer has written in her long and prolific career. I have defended her writing to those who have only dabbled in one or two works and form opinions. Gordimer's works are much more complex than one can dissect in one reading of a particularly book or in a reading of only one of her books.

Burger's Daughter was surprising, as all of Gordimer's works are. Gordimer has mastered the art of voice and gives her characters complex lives and thoughts without resorting to or relying on cliché or expectation. In Burger's Daughter, the protagonist lives a life that was created for her before she was even born. Her father's political activism created circumstances into which she would be born and in which she would be expected to live, much as royalty is born and expected to follow in the monarchy's traditions.

The book traces Burger's daughter through her literal and figurative explorations to find her own voice, which can be the most difficult thing one can do in life, particularly when overshadowed by the voices of everyone around you. This work is quite subtle and although surprising (only because I am always amazed that someone has such talent for breathing life into a page) it is very typical Gordimer. Well worth the time to read it.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A challenging but ultimately rewarding novel, April 24, 2000

By	"mattbeckett" (Durham, North Carolina) - See all my reviews

Nadine Gordimer's prose can be difficult to follow at the initial read, but is full of thought-provoking allusions and is a book you will definitely think about for a long time. In this tale, Burger represents the man who was Nelson Mandela's lawyer in apartheid South Africa. Gordimer follows Burger's daughter as she copes with ties to her homeland, the complicated issue of white and black in South Africa, and with both the persecution and expectations she faces because of her name. Highly recommended!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get Past the First Book, and Rest Will Be Pleasant [S], January 19, 2009

By	Miami Bob "Resurgent Reading" (Miami, FL United States) - See all my reviews

Just as Barack Hussein Obama glides into the oval office, reading a book like "Burger's Daughter" awakens dulled memories about how just a few decades ago tremendous racial injustice affected so many people for so many wrong reasons.

This is not so much about the story of a person with choice, but about how the privileged can be without choice. In South Africa, a determined doctor named Lionel Burger seeks to fight Apartheid with every ounce of strength he can muster. After numerous arrests, and a few trials, he eventually succumbs to illness delivered by reprehensible conditions of the jail - a home for years of his adult life. With him, he drags down his wife who enlists for his cause. And, while this spirit to fight for the oppressed continues, his son dives into the family's pool and dies a truly unfortunate and unexpected death - leaving an orphan and sibling-less child - Rosa Burger.

Uncle and aunt finish raising Rosa and she continues life in South Africa without life ruining remorse. What we may envision as interminable intolerance by Apartheid dogma which grates every imaginable ethic, Rosa seems not too angered, even in a land where she is rebuffed by others. Instead, she seems happy regardless of the aleatory destiny of her childhood - how a throw of the die has cast upon her a life totally deprived of family. The almost god-like avatar to the "cause", Doctor Burger never realizes that his choice to follow Chinese proverbs can have great ramifications upon his heirs, upon the living, upon the innocents. The Doctor follows Wang Ying-ming's dictate: "To know and not to act is not to know." From this faith of the father, Rosa suffers.

Burger sacrifices much. He gave up everything ". . . to turn his back on the laurels of white society and risk - no, refute outright - reputation, success and personal liberty, in the cause of the black people." What he also gave up what Rosa's freedom.

The book is chopped into three unequal parts. The first is the longest, and deals primarily with Rosa as she is now - the daughter of the white doctor who fought for the black commoner. This portion probably loses many readers as it is long and difficult in certain places. The second, shorter and more pleasant, deals with Rosa experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime vacation when the government allows her to go to Europe under the proviso that she says nothing about the oppression she knows too well. She meets Bernard Chabalier and has a great French affair. Here Rosa is no longer "Burger's daughter." Here she is in love, but not as happy as in Pretoria.

But, in the European trip she meets people who are rebels. She did not ask to meet them, they approached her. Rosa abided by her bargain - she refused an interview and left them without divulgence. But, the big brother of South Africa - BOSS - saw. And, Rosa ends up where her father lived most of his last years. In South Africa, she again is - and realizes that she always was- nothing more to the government than "Burger's daughter" and is thrown into a prison for having publicly met government rebels in another country where such meetings are neither outlawed nor even disdained.

The last two books read much more easily than the first. The love scenes in the second remind me of F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you are able to tread through the first, you will like and maybe love the last. But, getting past that hurdle has been difficult for many and is what delivers many of the poorer reviews on this page.

The book is somewhat outdated, which is surprising in that it was written in 1979. The topics of Red Russia, Trotsky-influenced Socialism, Leninists and more radical ideologies espoused by white well educated people reminds me of Lessing's The Golden Notebook This may alienate some readers. It is a topic that is perhaps too old to young readers.

This is not a self-pitying maudlin narrative. It is an effective account of great injustice by a government which almost blue-printed its oppressive hand from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four or Hitler's Reich.