HISTORY FICTION INTERFACE: REVISITING HISTORY IN NADINE GORDIMER’S BURGER’S DAUGHTER AND A SPORT OF NATURE

ABSTRACT The paper is an endeavour to revisit South African history in the Apartheid era, through two important novels of Nobel laureate author Nadine Gordimer. Her novels realistically capture the social, political milieu of the period and the immense impact historical movements have on the lives of racially diverse people inhabiting a common country. The struggle for power in South Africa has always been racially motivated, establishing white supremacy and dominion. While history documents, facts and archives events, social fiction of protest literature is an amalgam of the underlying affects and bearings such occurrences have on people. Such fictional history opens the door for alternative versions of historical storytelling. Alternative history is a path to understanding history beyond factual scholarship where history and fiction merge beyond defined demarcations of the real and unreal.