GORDIMER, Nadine

Burger’s daughter

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Everyone in the world must be told what a great hero (Lionel) was and how much he suffered for the blacks. Everyone must cry over him and show his life on television and write in the papers. Listen, there are dozens of our fathers sick and lying like dogs, kicked out of the locations when they can’t work anymore. Getting old and dying in prison. Killed in prison. It’s nothing.

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Even animals have the instinct to turn from suffering. The sense to run away. Perhaps it was an illness not to be able to live one’s life the way they did with justice defined in terms of respect of property, innocence defended in their children’s privileges… A sickness not to be able to ignore that condition of a healthy, ordinary life: other people’s suffering.

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It’s about suffering. How to end suffering. And it ends in suffering. Yes, it’s strange to live in a country where there are still heroes. But like anyone else, I do what I can.

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