Johannesburg: South African Nobel laureate for literature Nadine Gordimer was robbed and locked in a store room by thieves who assaulted her in her home, police said on Saturday.
Police spokesman Sergeant Sanku Tsunke said Gordimer, 83, did not sustain serious injuries when she was assaulted on Thursday for refusing to hand over her wedding ring.
He said Gordimer was robbed of cash and jewellery when three unknown men gained entrance to her home on Thursday.
Gordimer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, is noted for her novels and short stories about the inhumanity of apartheid. Several were once banned in her own country.
Tsunke said in a statement released today that the unarmed men held Gordimer and her domestic worker up. One of the men took Gordimer to a bedroom and demanded she open the safe.
She handed over cash and jewellery, but would not part with her wedding ring from her marriage to art dealer Reinhold Cassirer, who died in 2001.
"The suspects then locked both Gordimer and her domestic worker in a store room and fled the scene," Tsunke said. He said the domestic worker, whose name he did not know, had managed to press a panic button, triggering an alert with a security company.
Tsunke said guards arrived about half an hour later and released the women.
He said a case of house robbery and common assault was opened but no arrests had been made.
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