Beethoven Was One-sixteenth Black

by NadineGordimer (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.42

  This rich story collection will be a reminder to Nadine Gordimer's countless admirers, and a taster for the uninitiated, of her enduring imaginative power. A woman gauges the state of her marriage by the tone of her husband's cello; a wife reads her husband's mood by the scent in the nape of his neck; a newly emigrated couple are divided by visual obsession, he with his native Budapest, she with South African suburbia. With consummate artistry, Gordimer illustrates the show downs, standoffs and highlights of human intimacy while penetrating the nuances of immigration, national identity and race.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $3.57

  A woman gauges the state of her marriage by the tone of her husband's cello; a wife reads her husband's mood by the scent in the nape of his neck; a newly emigrated couple are divided by visual obsession, he with his native Budapest, she with South African suburbia. There is lively conversation amongst recently departed literary luminaries in the Chinese restaurant of 'Dreaming of the Dead', and a widow seeks an incarnation of her husband that she never knew in life when she meets his former gay lover in 'Allesverloren'. In 'A Frivolous Woman', an old woman compromises not just her own, but others' safety escaping from war-time Germany, while the title story illuminates a new discrimination, where people seek to claim - not hide - a trace of 'the tar brush'. Nadine Gordimer moves seamlessly between personal and political worlds in this magnificent new collection of stories, ironic, passionate, humorous, a reminder to her countless admirers, and a taste for the uninitiated, of her enduring, ever fresh imaginative power.