Synopsis:
A collection of essays by Nadine Gordimer, which illustrate the relationship between outer and inner change for the writer of conscience in South Africa. The essays range from the relative optimism of the 1950s, to the Sharpeville massacre, the banning in the 1960s of the ANC and the Pan-Africanist Congress, to the challenges of the Black Consciousness movement in the 1970s and the "interregnum" of the 1980s and also include pieces on travel. Nadine Gordimer is a Booker Prize-winning author and has written many items of fiction conveying the realities of transistion in South Africa.
From Library Journal:
Contrary to expectation, neither of these two books from prominent members of South Africa's writerly community concerns the craft of fiction or even things literary; they tend much more to social and political commentary. Paton's book is actually a continuation of Towards the Mountain ( LJ 9/15/80), but it is less mystical/global than the earlier book. Although classed as a biography, it does not reveal much about Paton's interior psychology or literary tastes; what one gets is his life set against the backdrop of events in South African history with which he was intimately involved as a world literary figure and social activist. His dissent is always emphatically stated. Gordimer's book, in contrast, is a collection of essays. The writing is sharper, the vocabulary heavier, the allusion thicker, but the theme similar: racial prejudice is abhorrent, especially when governmentally sanctioned, and it is the writer's responsibility to speak the truth. She deals a bit more with writers' concernsparticularly with literature as a revolutionary form, censorship matters, etc.and also provides more color, landscapes, images. But the core of the book is again social history and dissent from "official" South African norms. Paton's book is recommended for its straightforward, uncompromising account, Gordimer's for its combative shrewdness; both belong in all academic and larger public libraries.Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse,
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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