Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014)

Gordimer published short stories throughout her career, something like twenty collections in all; this was one of the last.

The stories in it range from fairly conventional adultery plots to the first-person narrative of a tapeworm and a whimsical piece about a cockroach that got stuck in her typewriter (she was reading Kafka's diaries at the time, so it inevitably became "Gregor"). There's quite a bit about the New South Africa, although the political messages are characteristically show more oblique, as in the title story, where a biology professor infused with white guilt sets out to see if he can find any black cousins who might have resulted from his great-grandfather's time in Kimberley during the diamond rush, then realises the absurdity of what he is doing. There are also a couple of rather touching pieces obviously written in reaction to the death of Gordimer's husband in 2005, including "Dreaming of the dead", a dreamed dinner party with the ghosts of Edward Said, Susan Sonntag and Anthony Sampson at which "you" (presumably the narrator's deceased partner) fails to turn up. In "Allesverloren" a widow tries to grasp something of her lost husband that has been closed to her when she goes to see the man who had been his partner for a while before she met him.

Maybe not especially challenging and experimental, but very sharp, clear-thinking writing. show less

Fascinating and incisive portrait of an unpleasant person and unnatural landscape. What a tense and uneasy feeling she produces through seemingly lyrical descriptions. I understand this approach is not for everyone, but I also understand why it won prizes.

James Bray had been a senior civil servant in the colonial administration of an unnamed African country. That was before he was expelled for supporting black nationalists seeking independence for their country.

Ten years on, he was contemplating an invitation from Adamson Mweta, one of those nationalists, to return for the celebration of Independence. The prospect of work was there too, as the newly independent country would be establishing its own civil service, but would need experienced show more people in senior positions while things got going. Such posts when held by Europeans were always contracts with the expectation that the consultant go home at the expiration of the contract. Bray's wife, so comfortable in their elegant Wiltshire manor, would not accompany him, at least not yet.

Bray did make the trip. He worked to set up educational facilities. His friendship with Mweta underwent the expected shifts from the change in their mutual balance of power. Expectations in the country were high and unrealistic. There was no infrastructure to meet the people's hopes. The idea that years would be required to reach their economic goals was not a popular message, and politicians who delivered it suffered.

Resistance movements sprang up, led by those independence leaders left out of the new status quo. Over time they were joined by the disillusioned in the new government.

Bray, who had lost so much for his pre-independence support of the movement, understood the mechanics of the turmoil, however it didn't make it any easier for him, especially as the European community fractured itself around him, as it began the process of leaving. Isolation didn't help. Separation from his wife and home made them seem more unreal as the two fo them reached an implicit understanding that she would not be joining him.

Gordimer's book is an exploration of the promise and the possibilities that accompanied the process of independence. Written in 1971 at a time when so many former colonies were struggling to find a new peaceful way of life with opportunities for all now that the initial liberation conflicts were ending, it has an immediacy and a prescience later treatments of the era can't match. show less

It's necessary first to understand what this is: a novel published in South Africa in 1981 that imagines a near-future civil war resulting from apartheid. The South African government banned this novel on publication, indicating the degree of fear at that time that some uprising like the one described might actually come to pass. As if this novel would give the oppressed segment of the population ideas they'd never contemplated, or the courage to embrace them. Given the happier course that show more actual history followed this may appear to date the work a bit, but racism did not evaporate when Nelson Mandela won the election; not in South Africa, not anywhere else.

Maureen and Bam are on different wavelengths in terms of adaptation. Bam views the circumstances as temporary, still clinging to his old perceptions, still viewing possessions as theirs, still jockeying for power and status. Maureen is striving harder to view their status in the new terms, knowing they remain under July's care at his whim. An interesting shift then takes place.

July's people retain their view of white folk as a source of trouble, unpredictable, the retainers of real power. They have not seen the white cities, cannot imagine what the uprising means. July is evolving along with his white guests, demonstrating the respect he's always shown but no longer as a servant, now as someone who can decide what is best for them. He is proprietary of their care; doesn't want them having to do too much outside his perceived role for them, but no longer because he is being paid by them. Now they are his people, too. show less