Nadine Gordimer Books

Toby Hood, a young Englishman, shuns the politics and the causes his liberal parents passionately support. Living in Johannesburg as a representative of his family's publishing company, Toby moves easily, carelessly, between the complacent wealthy white suburbs and the seething, vibrantly alive black townships. His friends include a wide variety of people, from mining directors to black journalists and musicians, and Toby's colonial-style weekends are often interspersed with clandestine evenings spent in black shanty towns. Toby's friendship with Steven Sithole, a dashing, embittered young African, touches him in ways he never thought possible, and when Steven's own sense of independence from the rules of society leads to tragedy, Toby's life is changed forever.

Originally published in 1979 as part of a collection of short stories, this is about a white couple and two black revolutionaries in Johannesberg. The story is set in a suburb which is in the grip of rumours of a strange creature said to be roaming among them.

James Bray, an English colonial administrator who was expelled from a central African nation for siding with its black nationalist leaders, is invited back ten years later to join in the country's independence celebrations. As he witnesses the factionalism and violence that erupt as revolutionary ideals are subverted by ambition and greed, Bray is once again forced to choose sides, a choice that becomes both his triumph and his undoing.

A profoundly moving book that combines the superb writings fo Gordimer and the stark, powerful photogrpahs fo Goldblatt to show us, in the details of individual lives, the great human damage wrought by apartheid. Black-and-white photographs.----------This work is another contribution to the growing pictorial record of apartheid in South Africa, and like some earlier series of black-and-white photographs it is haunted with pathos and irony. Like the pictures from Peter Magubane's Magubane's South Africa ( LJ 5/15/78), Goldblatt's images span 35 years and qualify as works of art in their own right. Complementing the harsh reality represented by the photographs are excerpts from the writings of South African novelist Gordimer, which in their way are as telling as the scholarly pieces that accompany South Africa, the Cordoned Heart , edited by Omar Badsha ( LJ 5/15/86), a work to which Goldblatt also contributed. Despite the photographic essays already available, libraries may still find this handsome book worth acquiring. Paul H. Thomas, Hoover Inst. Lib., Stanford, Cal.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A startling new work from a Nobel prize-winning author: ten short stories, each a revelation of our interior lives, each entering unforeseen contexts of our contemporary world. In the title story an earthquake exposes both an ocean bed strewn with treasure among the dead, and the avarice of the town's survivors. In 'The Diamond Mine' a woman remembers her first, passionately erotic experience, hidden, in the company of her parents, with a soldier who may not be alive to remember her. The anopheles mosquito brings death to the saunas and other playgrounds of the developed with in 'The Emissary'. In 'Karma', Gordimer's inventiveness knows no bounds: in five returns to the earthly life, taking on different ages and genders, a disembodied narrator testifies to unfinished business - critically, wittily - and questions the nature of existence.

Nadine Gordimer's first novel, published in 1953, tells the story of Helen Shaw, daughter of white middle-class parents in a small gold-mining town in South Africa. As Helen comes of age, so does her awareness grow of the African life around her. Her involvement, as a bohemian student, with young blacks leads her into complex relationships of emotion and action in a culture of dissension.

A collection of short stories exploring the emotional and physical landscapes of South Africa.Contents: A soldier's embrace -- A lion on the freeway -- Siblings -- Time did -- A hunting accident -- For dear life -- Town and country lovers one -- (Two) -- A mad one -- You name it -- The termitary -- The need for something sweet -- Oral history.

In sixteen new stories ranging from the dynamics of family life to the worldwide confusion of human values, Nadine Gordimer gives us access to many lives in places as far apart as suburban London, Mozambique, a mythical island, and South Africa.