July's People

Name: July's People
Brand: Blackstone Audiobooks
Availability: InStock
Author: Nadine Gordimer
ISBN: 9781481507967

Author: Nadine Gordimer

Narrator: Wanda McCaddon

Unabridged: 4 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Published: 09/01/2014

Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

For years, it has been what is called a “deteriorating situation.” Now it is war. All over South Africa, cities are battlegrounds, and radio and television stations are under siege. Bam and Maureen Smales take up their servant July’s suggestion and drive with their children to his remote home village. For fifteen years, July has been the decently treated black servant, totally dependent on them. Now, he becomes their host, their savior, and their keeper. Suddenly facing a hunted life of bare subsistence, owing their survival to July, the Smales are forced to look at him and at one another in an entirely new light. They find life utterly changed and harboring different dread and hope for each individual.

About Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) was born in South Africa. She received numerous international prizes for her writing, including the Modern Language Association Award, the Bennett Award, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. She was given honorary degrees by Yale, Harvard, and other universities and was honored by the French government with the decoration Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

About Wanda McCaddon

Wanda McCaddon (d. 2023) narrated well over six hundred titles for major audiobook publishers, sometimes with the pseudonym Nadia May or Donada Peters. She earned the prestigious Audio Award for best narration and numerous Earphones Awards. She was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Whitney on September 13, 2016

This book was downright rough. It took a lot of googling and professor explanations to realize what was happening, because me and this writing style just did NOT click. That was the main downfall of this book, I definitely think: the writing was done so weirdly and awkwardly and hard to read. A lot......more

Goodreads review by Kiran on February 06, 2024

4.5 ⭐️ rounded up Although July's People focuses on a heavy topic, a fictional civil war in the dying days of Apartheid in South Africa, I found it an enthralling read. Perhaps, this is due to my own profound connection with the country, which dates back more than a decade, when I lived there from 20......more

Goodreads review by Fabian on September 05, 2019

Everything shines like blistering cobalt, cooper & gold: dialogue (precise & natural), character, prose, story, history, the resulting legend. "July's People" is all about tiny events that go all but unnoticed as whites and blacks try to hide from the civil war in 80's South Africa. The fractions of......more

Quotes

“So flawlessly written that every one of its events seems chillingly, ominously possible.” Anne Tyler, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist

“Gordimer’s art has achieved and sustained a rare beauty. Her prose has a density and sparsity that one finds in the greatest writers.” New Leader

“Gordimer’s finely wrought novel works as both a survival story and a psychological tour de force…Both aspects are enhanced by Nadia May’s taut narration, especially her interpretations of July and his former employers.” Library Journal

“May’s reading is fully voiced. She effectively reads words of small peevish children, and she catches various moods and levels of feeling by the adults in the story.” Kliatt

“Nadine Gordimer writes more knowingly about South Africa than anyone else.” Anatole Broyard, New York Times

“Gordimer knows this complex and emotional and political terriory all too well and writes about it superbly.” Newsweek

Awards

Nobel Prize