Item Condition: Used; Very Good
Perhaps the passing away of an old regime makes
abandonment of an old self possible.
In an extraordinary period immediately before the first
non-racial election and the beginning of majority rule in
South Africa, Vera Stark, the protagonist of Nadine
Gordimer's passionate new novel, weaves a ruthless
interpretation of her own past into her participation in
the present as a lawyer representing blacks in the
struggle to reclaim the land. The return of exiles is
transforming the city, and, through the lives of Didymus
Maqoma, his wife Sibongile, and their lovely daughter
who cannot even speak her parents' African language,
the reader experiences the strange passions, reversals
and dangers that accompany new-won access to power.
All must change: Didymus, once a major actor in the
resistance, making way for Sibongile's emergence as a
political figure; Vera, working through the consequences
of a lifetime's commitments to a new kind of relationship
with a new man of the times, Zeph Rapulana.
None to Accompany Me is arresting and reverberant -
perhaps the most powerful novel to date by one of the
world's most commanding writers.
Nadine Gordimer's recent books are My Son's Story
(1990) and Jump and Other Stories (1991l). She was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. She
lives in Johannesburg.