structural:scholar_edition
Early life

Gordimer was born to Jewish parents near Springs, an East Rand mining town outside Johannesburg. She was the second daughter of Isidore Gordimer (1887-1962), a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant watchmaker from Žagarė in Lithuania (then occupied by the Russian Empire), and Hannah "Nan" (née Myers) Gordimer (1897-1973), a British Jewish immigrant from London. Her father was raised with an Orthodox Jewish education before immigrating with his family to South Africa at the age of 13. Her mother was from an established family and came to South Africa at the age of 6 with her parents. Gordimer was raised in a secular household. Her mother was not religiously observant, and mostly assimilated, whereas her father maintained a membership of the local Orthodox synagogue and attended once a year for the Yom Kippur services.