In this collection of new stories, Nadine Gordimer crosses the frontiers of politics, memory, sexuality, and love with the fearless insight that is the hallmark of her writing. In the title story, a middle-aged academic who had been an anti-apartheid activist embarks on an unadmitted pursuit of the possibilities for his own racial identity in his great-grandfather's fortune-hunting interlude of living rough on diamond diggings in South Africa, his young wife far away in London. “Dreaming of the Dead” conjures up a lunch in a New York Chinese restaurant where Susan Sontag and Edward Said return in surprising new avatars as guests in the dream of a loving friend. The historian in “History” is a parrot who confronts people with the scandalizing voice reproduction of quarrels and clandestine love-talk on which it has eavesdropped. “Alternative Endings” considers the way writers make arbitrary choices in how to end stories—and offers three, each relating the same situation, but with a different resolution, arrived at by the three senses: sight, sound, and smell.
- It's your lucky day!
- Always Available Ebooks: Kids Classics
- Always Available Ebooks: Classic Fiction
- Always Available Ebooks: Classic Nonfiction
- Great reads without the wait!
- Adapted for Young Readers
- Juvenile Cumulative Youth Media Awards
- Black History
- Love is in the Air
- Noteworthy Reads
- See all
- It's your lucky day!
- Always Available Audiobooks
- Great reads without the wait!
- Everyone Reads: Spanish Titles for Young Readers
- Adapted for Young Readers
- Juvenile Cumulative Youth Media Awards
- Black History
- Love is in the Air
- Noteworthy Reads
- See all