Burger's Daughter
Encyclopedia
Burger's Daughter is an historical novel
by South Africa
n Nobel Prize in Literature
-winner Nadine Gordimer
, originally published in the United Kingdom in 1979 by Jonathan Cape
. It was not published in South Africa because Gordimer expected the book to be banned in that country, and it was, although the restriction was lifted six months later.
Burger's Daughter is about white anti-apartheid
activists in South Africa seeking to overthrow the South African government. Written in the wake of the 1976 Soweto uprising, it follows the life of Rosa, the title character, as she comes to terms with her father Lionel's legacy as an activist in the South African Communist Party
(SACP) over the course of 30 years. The perspective shifts between Rosa's internal monologue
(often directed towards her father or her semi-lover Conrad), and the omniscient narrator. The novel is routed in the history of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa with references to actual events and people from that period.
Gordimer described the novel as "a coded homage" to Bram Fischer
, Nelson Mandela
's treason trial
defence lawyer.
, the Afrikaner
advocate
and Communist who was Nelson Mandela
's defence lawyer in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Gordimer was friends with many of the activist families, including Fischer's, and knew that the children in these families were "politically groomed" for the struggle, and that the struggle came first and they came second. She modelled the Burger family in the novel loosely on Fischer's family. While Gordimer never said it was about him, she did describe the novel as "a coded homage" to Bram Fischer. Fischer's daughter said later that she "recognised their lives" in the book.
Gordimer herself became involved in South African struggle politics after the arrest of a friend, Bettie du Toit in 1960. Just as Rosa Burger in the novel visits family in prison, so Gordimer visited her friend. Later in 1986, she testified at the Delmas Treason Trial
in support of 22 African National Congress
(ANC) members accused of treason. She was a member of the ANC while it was still an illegal organization in South Arica, and hid several ANC leaders in her own home to evade arrest by the security forces.
A month after its publication in London, Burger's Daughter was banned in South Africa for various reasons, including "propagating Communist opinions", "creating a psychosis of revolution and rebellion", and "making several unbridled attacks against the authority entrusted with the maintenance of law and order and the safety of the state". Gordimer knew that the book would be banned, but nonetheless protested by publishing a pamphlet in 1980, entitled What happened to Burger's daughter or how South African censorship works. After six months the South African government lifted their ban on the book, which Gordimer attributed to her international stature.
Burger's Daughter was smuggled into Robben Island
where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated, and after reading it, Mandela requested a meeting with Gordimer. She applied several times to visit him on the Island, but was declined each time. She was, however, at the gate waiting for him when he was released in 1990.
in the early- to mid-1970s during Apartheid. Rosa is the daughter of Lionel Burger, a white Afrikaner
anti-apartheid
activist, who has been arrested and is standing trial for treason. The court finds him guilty and sentences him to life in prison. Rosa visits him regularly, just as she visited her mother, Cathy Burger when she was imprisoned some ten years previously. Cathy died when Rosa was still at school. Rosa grew up in a family that actively supported the overthrow of the apartheid government, and the house they lived in opened its doors to anyone supporting the struggle, regardless of colour. Living with them was "Baasie", a black boy Rosa's age the Burgers had "adopted" when his father was arrested and later died in prison. Bassie and Rosa grew up as brother and sister. Both Rosa's parents were members of the outlawed South African Communist Party
(SACP), and she was told from an early age that they could be detained at any time by the authorities. When Rosa was nine, both her parents were arrested and she was sent to stay with her father's sister's family in a rural farming community in the Northern Transvaal
. Baasie was sent elsewhere because, she was told, he would not be accepted there. It was here that Rosa experienced apartheid for the first time and the way black people were mistreated.
In 1974, after three years in prison Lionel Burger succumbs to ill-health and dies. At 26, Rosa, for the first time in her life, has no immediate family. She sells the Burger's house and moves in with Conrad, a post-graduate student who had befriended her during her father's trial. Rosa is not in love with Conrad, but their relationship is convenient during this difficult time. Conrad questions her role in the Burger family and the fact that she always did what she was told. Once she was instructed to pretend to be a political detainee's fiancé so she could visit him in prison and give him messages. Rosa dutifully obliged. Conrad questioned whether she even has her own identity, because everyone sees her as Burger's daughter, not Rosa. Later Rosa leaves Conrad and moves into a flat on her own. She works for a while as a physiotherapist
at a hospital, but then quits to work for an investment consultant.
Rosa grants a series of interviews to a biographer writing a book on her now famous father. Lionel became a medical doctor in the 1920s and married Colette Swan (Katya). They attended the 6th World Congress of the Communist International
in Moscow in 1926, and after returning to South Africa, joined the SACP. Lionel and Katya were divorced in the early 1940s, and in 1946 Lionel married Cathy Jansen, a trade unionist working with illegal black trade unions.
While some of Lionel's former associates are banned or under house arrest
, Rosa is "named", meaning that she is labelled a Communist, is under surveillance and denied a passport. In 1975, despite her restrictions, she attends a party of a friend in Soweto
, and it is there that she hears a black university student dismissing all whites' help as irrelevant, saying that whites cannot know what blacks want, and that blacks will liberate themselves. Realising she needs to be somewhere else, Rosa asks Brand Vermeulen, a prominent "liberal" Afrikaner, for help in getting a passport. Vermeulen knew and respected her father, but believed Lionel took a wrong turn when he betrayed his people. Against the advice of the Bureau of State Security
, the government issues Rosa a passport, and she flies to France where she meets, for the first time, Katya in Nice
. Rosa spends several months there and is able to be herself for the first time in her life. She meets Bernard Chabalier, a visiting academic and teacher from Paris, and in spite of the fact that he is married, they become lovers. He persuades her to return to Paris with him, where he says the French Anti-Apartheid Movement will be only too happy to organize a flat for Lionel Burger's daughter.
Rosa agrees to be Bernard's mistress, and moves into a flat in London for several weeks while Bernard sorts out his affairs in Paris. Now that she has no intention of honouring the agreement of her passport, which was to return to South Africa within a year, she openly introduces herself to others as Burger's daughter. This attracts the attention of the media and she attends several political events. At one such event, Rosa sees Baasie, but when she tries to reunite with him, he is reluctant to want to be seen with her. She gives him her phone number, and later he phones her in the middle of the night and immediately starts criticizing her for not knowing his real name (Zwelinzima Vulindlela). He says that there is nothing special about her father having died in prison as many black fathers have also died there, that he does not need her help and that "I'm not your Baasie!" Rosa is devastated by her childhood friend's hurtful remarks, and overcome with guilt, she abandons her plans of going into exile in France and returns to South Africa.
Back home she resumes her job as a physiotherapist in Soweto. Then in June 1976 Soweto school children start protesting about their inferior education and being taught in Afrikaans
. They go on the rampage, which includes killing white welfare workers in Soweto. The police brutally put down the uprising, resulting in hundreds of deaths. In October 1977, many organizations and people critical of the white government are banned, and in November 1977 Rosa Burger is detained. Her lawyer, who also represented her father, expects charges to be brought against her of furthering the aims of the banned SACP and ANC, and of aiding and abetting the students' revolt.
, a British writer, journalist and former editor of Drum, a magazine in Johannesburg
in the 1950s, wrote in The New York Times
that Burger's Daughter is Gordimer's "most political and most moving novel". He said that its "political authenticity" set in the "historical background of real people" makes it "harshly realistic", and added that the blending of people, landscapes and politics remind one of the great Russian pre-revolutionary novels. In The New York Review of Books
, Conor O’Brien compared Gordimer's writing to that of Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev
, and described the style of Burger's Daughter as "elegant" and "fastidious" and belonging to a "cultivated upper class". He said this style is not at odds with the subject matter of the story because Rosa Burger, daughter of a revolutionary, believes herself to be an "aristocrat of the revolution".
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
by South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
-winner Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer is a South African writer and political activist. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature when she was recognised as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".Her writing has long dealt...
, originally published in the United Kingdom in 1979 by Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape was a London-based publisher founded in 1919 as "Page & Co" by Herbert Jonathan Cape , formerly a manager at Duckworth who had worked his way up from a position of bookshop errand boy. Cape brought with him the rights to cheap editions of the popular author Elinor Glyn and sales of...
. It was not published in South Africa because Gordimer expected the book to be banned in that country, and it was, although the restriction was lifted six months later.
Burger's Daughter is about white anti-apartheid
Internal resistance to South African apartheid
Internal resistance to the apartheid system in South Africa came from several sectors of society and saw the creation of organisations dedicated variously to peaceful protests, passive resistance and armed insurrection. It came from both black activists like Steve Biko and Desmond Tutu as well as...
activists in South Africa seeking to overthrow the South African government. Written in the wake of the 1976 Soweto uprising, it follows the life of Rosa, the title character, as she comes to terms with her father Lionel's legacy as an activist in the South African Communist Party
South African Communist Party
South African Communist Party is a political party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H...
(SACP) over the course of 30 years. The perspective shifts between Rosa's internal monologue
Internal monologue
Internal monologue, also known as inner voice, internal speech, or verbal stream of consciousness is thinking in words. It also refers to the semi-constant internal monologue one has with oneself at a conscious or semi-conscious level....
(often directed towards her father or her semi-lover Conrad), and the omniscient narrator. The novel is routed in the history of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa with references to actual events and people from that period.
Gordimer described the novel as "a coded homage" to Bram Fischer
Bram Fischer
Abram Louis Fischer, commonly known as Bram Fischer, was a South African lawyer of Afrikaner descent, notable for anti-apartheid activism and for the legal defence of anti-apartheid figures, including Nelson Mandela at the Rivonia Trial.-Tributes:Fischer is widely acknowledged as a key figure in...
, Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
's treason trial
Rivonia Trial
The Rivonia Trial was a trial that took place in South Africa between 1963 and 1964, in which ten leaders of the African National Congress were tried for 221 acts of sabotage designed to overthrow the apartheid system.-Origins:...
defence lawyer.
Background
Gordimer said in an interview in 1980 that the idea for Burger's Daughter had been with her for "a long time". She was fascinated by the role of "white hard-core Leftists" in South Africa, and was inspired by the work of Bram FischerBram Fischer
Abram Louis Fischer, commonly known as Bram Fischer, was a South African lawyer of Afrikaner descent, notable for anti-apartheid activism and for the legal defence of anti-apartheid figures, including Nelson Mandela at the Rivonia Trial.-Tributes:Fischer is widely acknowledged as a key figure in...
, the Afrikaner
Afrikaner
Afrikaners are an ethnic group in Southern Africa descended from almost equal numbers of Dutch, French and German settlers whose native tongue is Afrikaans: a Germanic language which derives primarily from 17th century Dutch, and a variety of other languages.-Related ethno-linguistic groups:The...
advocate
Advocate
An advocate is a term for a professional lawyer used in several different legal systems. These include Scotland, South Africa, India, Scandinavian jurisdictions, Israel, and the British Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man...
and Communist who was Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
's defence lawyer in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Gordimer was friends with many of the activist families, including Fischer's, and knew that the children in these families were "politically groomed" for the struggle, and that the struggle came first and they came second. She modelled the Burger family in the novel loosely on Fischer's family. While Gordimer never said it was about him, she did describe the novel as "a coded homage" to Bram Fischer. Fischer's daughter said later that she "recognised their lives" in the book.
Gordimer herself became involved in South African struggle politics after the arrest of a friend, Bettie du Toit in 1960. Just as Rosa Burger in the novel visits family in prison, so Gordimer visited her friend. Later in 1986, she testified at the Delmas Treason Trial
Delmas Treason Trial
The Delmas Treason Trial in South Africa was the prosecution of 22 anti-apartheid activists under security laws, with the intention of suppressing the United Democratic Front . The defendants included three senior UDF leaders, Frank Chikane, Mosiuoa Lekota and Popo Molefe, known as the "Big Three"...
in support of 22 African National Congress
African National Congress
The African National Congress is South Africa's governing Africanist political party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a...
(ANC) members accused of treason. She was a member of the ANC while it was still an illegal organization in South Arica, and hid several ANC leaders in her own home to evade arrest by the security forces.
A month after its publication in London, Burger's Daughter was banned in South Africa for various reasons, including "propagating Communist opinions", "creating a psychosis of revolution and rebellion", and "making several unbridled attacks against the authority entrusted with the maintenance of law and order and the safety of the state". Gordimer knew that the book would be banned, but nonetheless protested by publishing a pamphlet in 1980, entitled What happened to Burger's daughter or how South African censorship works. After six months the South African government lifted their ban on the book, which Gordimer attributed to her international stature.
Burger's Daughter was smuggled into Robben Island
Robben Island
Robben Island is an island in Table Bay, 6.9 km west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, Cape Town, South Africa. The name is Dutch for "seal island". Robben Island is roughly oval in shape, 3.3 km long north-south, and 1.9 km wide, with an area of 5.07 km². It is flat and only a...
where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated, and after reading it, Mandela requested a meeting with Gordimer. She applied several times to visit him on the Island, but was declined each time. She was, however, at the gate waiting for him when he was released in 1990.
Plot summary
The novel is set mostly in JohannesburgJohannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
in the early- to mid-1970s during Apartheid. Rosa is the daughter of Lionel Burger, a white Afrikaner
Afrikaner
Afrikaners are an ethnic group in Southern Africa descended from almost equal numbers of Dutch, French and German settlers whose native tongue is Afrikaans: a Germanic language which derives primarily from 17th century Dutch, and a variety of other languages.-Related ethno-linguistic groups:The...
anti-apartheid
Internal resistance to South African apartheid
Internal resistance to the apartheid system in South Africa came from several sectors of society and saw the creation of organisations dedicated variously to peaceful protests, passive resistance and armed insurrection. It came from both black activists like Steve Biko and Desmond Tutu as well as...
activist, who has been arrested and is standing trial for treason. The court finds him guilty and sentences him to life in prison. Rosa visits him regularly, just as she visited her mother, Cathy Burger when she was imprisoned some ten years previously. Cathy died when Rosa was still at school. Rosa grew up in a family that actively supported the overthrow of the apartheid government, and the house they lived in opened its doors to anyone supporting the struggle, regardless of colour. Living with them was "Baasie", a black boy Rosa's age the Burgers had "adopted" when his father was arrested and later died in prison. Bassie and Rosa grew up as brother and sister. Both Rosa's parents were members of the outlawed South African Communist Party
South African Communist Party
South African Communist Party is a political party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H...
(SACP), and she was told from an early age that they could be detained at any time by the authorities. When Rosa was nine, both her parents were arrested and she was sent to stay with her father's sister's family in a rural farming community in the Northern Transvaal
Limpopo
Limpopo is the northernmost province of South Africa. The capital is Polokwane, formerly named Pietersburg. The province was formed from the northern region of Transvaal Province in 1994, and initially named Northern Transvaal...
. Baasie was sent elsewhere because, she was told, he would not be accepted there. It was here that Rosa experienced apartheid for the first time and the way black people were mistreated.
In 1974, after three years in prison Lionel Burger succumbs to ill-health and dies. At 26, Rosa, for the first time in her life, has no immediate family. She sells the Burger's house and moves in with Conrad, a post-graduate student who had befriended her during her father's trial. Rosa is not in love with Conrad, but their relationship is convenient during this difficult time. Conrad questions her role in the Burger family and the fact that she always did what she was told. Once she was instructed to pretend to be a political detainee's fiancé so she could visit him in prison and give him messages. Rosa dutifully obliged. Conrad questioned whether she even has her own identity, because everyone sees her as Burger's daughter, not Rosa. Later Rosa leaves Conrad and moves into a flat on her own. She works for a while as a physiotherapist
Physical therapy
Physical therapy , often abbreviated PT, is a health care profession. Physical therapy is concerned with identifying and maximizing quality of life and movement potential within the spheres of promotion, prevention, diagnosis, treatment/intervention,and rehabilitation...
at a hospital, but then quits to work for an investment consultant.
Rosa grants a series of interviews to a biographer writing a book on her now famous father. Lionel became a medical doctor in the 1920s and married Colette Swan (Katya). They attended the 6th World Congress of the Communist International
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
in Moscow in 1926, and after returning to South Africa, joined the SACP. Lionel and Katya were divorced in the early 1940s, and in 1946 Lionel married Cathy Jansen, a trade unionist working with illegal black trade unions.
While some of Lionel's former associates are banned or under house arrest
House arrest
In justice and law, house arrest is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to his or her residence. Travel is usually restricted, if allowed at all...
, Rosa is "named", meaning that she is labelled a Communist, is under surveillance and denied a passport. In 1975, despite her restrictions, she attends a party of a friend in Soweto
Soweto
Soweto is a lower-class-populated urban area of the city of Johannesburg in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for South Western Townships...
, and it is there that she hears a black university student dismissing all whites' help as irrelevant, saying that whites cannot know what blacks want, and that blacks will liberate themselves. Realising she needs to be somewhere else, Rosa asks Brand Vermeulen, a prominent "liberal" Afrikaner, for help in getting a passport. Vermeulen knew and respected her father, but believed Lionel took a wrong turn when he betrayed his people. Against the advice of the Bureau of State Security
South African Bureau of State Security
The South African Bureau for State Security was established in 1969 and replaced by the National Intelligence Service in 1980. The Bureau's job was to monitor national security...
, the government issues Rosa a passport, and she flies to France where she meets, for the first time, Katya in Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
. Rosa spends several months there and is able to be herself for the first time in her life. She meets Bernard Chabalier, a visiting academic and teacher from Paris, and in spite of the fact that he is married, they become lovers. He persuades her to return to Paris with him, where he says the French Anti-Apartheid Movement will be only too happy to organize a flat for Lionel Burger's daughter.
Rosa agrees to be Bernard's mistress, and moves into a flat in London for several weeks while Bernard sorts out his affairs in Paris. Now that she has no intention of honouring the agreement of her passport, which was to return to South Africa within a year, she openly introduces herself to others as Burger's daughter. This attracts the attention of the media and she attends several political events. At one such event, Rosa sees Baasie, but when she tries to reunite with him, he is reluctant to want to be seen with her. She gives him her phone number, and later he phones her in the middle of the night and immediately starts criticizing her for not knowing his real name (Zwelinzima Vulindlela). He says that there is nothing special about her father having died in prison as many black fathers have also died there, that he does not need her help and that "I'm not your Baasie!" Rosa is devastated by her childhood friend's hurtful remarks, and overcome with guilt, she abandons her plans of going into exile in France and returns to South Africa.
Back home she resumes her job as a physiotherapist in Soweto. Then in June 1976 Soweto school children start protesting about their inferior education and being taught in Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
. They go on the rampage, which includes killing white welfare workers in Soweto. The police brutally put down the uprising, resulting in hundreds of deaths. In October 1977, many organizations and people critical of the white government are banned, and in November 1977 Rosa Burger is detained. Her lawyer, who also represented her father, expects charges to be brought against her of furthering the aims of the banned SACP and ANC, and of aiding and abetting the students' revolt.
Main characters
All characters are South African unless otherwise stated.- Lionel Burger – a white AfrikanerAfrikanerAfrikaners are an ethnic group in Southern Africa descended from almost equal numbers of Dutch, French and German settlers whose native tongue is Afrikaans: a Germanic language which derives primarily from 17th century Dutch, and a variety of other languages.-Related ethno-linguistic groups:The...
born 1905 in the Northern TransvaalLimpopoLimpopo is the northernmost province of South Africa. The capital is Polokwane, formerly named Pietersburg. The province was formed from the northern region of Transvaal Province in 1994, and initially named Northern Transvaal...
; a medical doctor, studied at Cape Town UniversityUniversity of Cape TownThe University of Cape Town is a public research university located in Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. UCT was founded in 1829 as the South African College, and is the oldest university in South Africa and the second oldest extant university in Africa.-History:The roots of...
and graduated at Edinburgh UniversityUniversity of EdinburghThe University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
in the late 1920s; an anti-apartheidInternal resistance to South African apartheidInternal resistance to the apartheid system in South Africa came from several sectors of society and saw the creation of organisations dedicated variously to peaceful protests, passive resistance and armed insurrection. It came from both black activists like Steve Biko and Desmond Tutu as well as...
activist and a member of the banned South African Communist PartySouth African Communist PartySouth African Communist Party is a political party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H...
(SACP) - Cathy Burger (née Jansen) – Lionel's second wife, a trade unionist and later a member of the SACP; married in August 1946 during the African Mine Workers' StrikeAfrican Mine Workers' StrikeThe African Mine Workers' Strike, by mine workers of Witwatersrand started on August 12, 1946 and lasted around 1 week. The strike was attacked by police and over the week, at least 1,248 workers were wounded and at least 9 killed.-African Mine Workers' Union:...
while they were out on bail after having been arrested on a charge of orchestrating the strike - Rosemarie Burger (Rosa) – Lionel and Cathy's daughter, born May 1948; her name was derived from Rosa LuxemburgRosa LuxemburgRosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
(a Polish MarxistMarxismMarxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
) and Marie Burger (Lionel's mother); a physiotherapist by profession - Zwelinzima Vulindlela ("Baasie") – a black student, taken in and "adopted" by the Burger family when he was a child after his father was arrested and later died in prison; the same age as Rosa, she treated him like her brother; she never knew his real name as the family simply called him "Baasie"
- Colette Burger/Bagnelli (née Swan) (Katya) – Lionel's first wife, married in London where she was studying ballet, and returned to South Africa with Lionel in 1930; divorced in the 1940s; moved to France where she married a captain in the French navy, Ugo Bagnelli; widowed after Bagnelli died
- Conrad – a post-graduate student and Rosa's first live-in companion; he is her conscience who questions her identity and role
- Bernard Chabalier – a French academic and teacher in Paris working on his doctoral thesis; married with two children; Rosa's first lover
Reception
Anthony SampsonAnthony Sampson
Anthony Terrell Seward Sampson was a British writer and journalist. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford and served with the Royal Navy from 1944-47. During the 1950s he edited the magazine Drum in Johannesburg, South Africa...
, a British writer, journalist and former editor of Drum, a magazine in Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
in the 1950s, wrote in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
that Burger's Daughter is Gordimer's "most political and most moving novel". He said that its "political authenticity" set in the "historical background of real people" makes it "harshly realistic", and added that the blending of people, landscapes and politics remind one of the great Russian pre-revolutionary novels. In The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
, Conor O’Brien compared Gordimer's writing to that of Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
, and described the style of Burger's Daughter as "elegant" and "fastidious" and belonging to a "cultivated upper class". He said this style is not at odds with the subject matter of the story because Rosa Burger, daughter of a revolutionary, believes herself to be an "aristocrat of the revolution".