Gordimer, Nadine 1923–

Ms Gordimer, a South African novelist and short story writer, works at the center of the emerging South African literary tradition. She has said that, in South Africa, "society is the political situation"; hence, her fiction continues to explore the immorality of apartheid and other, often political, aspects of contemporary life in an uneasy multi-racial society. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)

Far and away the best thing in A Guest of Honour is the description of Africa. It is a wonderfully rich description, drawing on a fine feeling both for nature and history, and an exceptional knowledge of individual African character…. [The] note of authentic observation runs everywhere through the book.

Yet this is not a novel like, say, Conrad's Nostromo, passing on to us the personal experiences of a representative group of inhabitants of an unstable country, and...

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