The Conservationist

An interesting story about a millionaire South African who buys a 400 acre farm near Johannesburg in the apartheid era. The main character made his money in the mineral world and is bit like a duck out of water. Splitting his time between his flat in the city and the farm. Mehring visits the farm as......more

This is a novel to admire, to tremble in sheer awe at the power of Gordimer's language, her mastery of sensuality, and the importance of its themes: the skewering of apartheid during a time when the anti-apartheid movement floundered, leaderless and without much will (early-mid 1970s). It is a tough......more

Reading like a series of impressions, the disjointed narrative style is counterbalanced by the ethereal imagery which Gordimer conjures up; whether it be the stifling, suffocating South African heat or the rambunctious river torrents, Gordimer conjures up a South Africa which appears to be spirallin......more

This is the kind of book that college professors love to assign to their undergrads. Similar to Carlos Fuentes' The Death of Artemio Cruz, in which Artemio's life and death serve as metaphors for the historic arc of the Mexican Revolution and the corrupt PRI party it spawned, the anti-hero of Th......more