No Time Like the Present - Couverture rigide

Gordimer, Nadine

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0374222649 ISBN 13 : 9780374222642

Editeur : Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2012

Synopsis

A sharply observed new novel about post-apartheid South Africa from the Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer is one of our most telling contemporary writers. With each new work, she attacks--with a clear-eyed fierceness, a lack of sentimentality, and a deep understanding of the darkest depths of the human soul--her eternal themes: the inextricable link between personal and communal history; the inescapable moral ambiguities of daily life; the political and racial tensions that persist in her homeland, South Africa. And in each new work is fresh evidence of her literary genius: in the sharpness of her psychological insights, the stark beauty of her language, the complexity of her characters, and the difficult choices with which they are faced. In "No Time Like the Present," Gordimer trains her keen eye on Steve and Jabulile, an interracial couple living in a newly, tentatively, free South Africa. They have a daughter, Sindiswa; they move to the suburbs; Steve becomes a lecturer at a university; Jabulile trains to become a lawyer; there is another child, a boy this time. There is nothing so extraordinary about their lives, and yet, in telling their story and the stories of their friends and families, Gordimer manages to capture the tortured, fragmented essence of a nation struggling to define itself post-apartheid. The subject is contemporary, but Gordimer's treatment is, as ever, timeless. In "No Time Like the Present," she shows herself once again a master novelist, at the height of her prodigious powers.

A propos du livre

Revue de presse

'Nadine Gordimer is one of the best story-writers in English today.' -- Observer

'Gordimer's stark sentences and emotional depth make most modern fiction seem trivial.' -- The Times

'Gordimer has undoubtedly become one of the World's Great Writers ... her rootedness in a political time, place and faith has never dimmed her complex gifts as an artist.' -- Independent

'Nadine Gordimer writes of blacks and whites, but her steady, unblinking eye sees something grey there. You could call it human nature, and you would be right.' --Daily Telegraph

'Gordimer fashions a grand, state-of-her-nation novel about South Africa from Presidents Mandela to Zuma ... A mightily serious and impressive book' -- Daily Mail

'Nadine Gordimer is a towering figure in South African literature, and, at 88, remains a vital, productive force' -- Metro

'At best her free-style, high-velocity storytelling [Gordimer] delivers a visceral immediacy and intensity that lets us inhabit the minds, and share the views, of her characters with the minimum of novelistic fuss ... Written with a ferocious, high-definition attentiveness ... Gordimer, a nonpareil observer of the outer and inner life alike, sustains her heroic mission of witness and warning' --Independent

'A complex book and a pained examination of the difficulties posed by a freedom that was won by imperfect human beings' -- Guardian

'This is a book of great thematic richness and quiet brilliance' -- Sunday Times

'This is an important and highly topical book about how hard it is to sustain hope and idealism in the wake of a revolution ... Gordimer has written an angry, melancholy, brave book' --Spectator

Présentation de l'éditeur

Nadine Gordimer is one of our most telling contemporary writers. With each new work, she attacks - with a clear-eyed lack of sentimentality, and an understanding of the darkest depths of the human soul - the inextricable link between personal life and political, communal history. The revelation of this theme in each new work, not only in her homeland South Africa, but the twenty-first century world, is evidence of her literary genius: in the sharpness of her psychological insights, the stark beauty of her language, the complexity of her characters and the difficult choices with which they are faced.

In No Time Like the Present, Gordimer brings the reader into the lives of Steven Reed and Jabulile Gumede, a 'mixed' couple, both of whom have been combatants in the struggle for freedom against apartheid. Once clandestine lovers under racist law forbidding sexual relations between white and black, they are now in the new South Africa. The place and time where freedom - the 'better life for all' that was fought for and promised - is being created but also challenged by political and racial tensions, while the hangover of moral ambiguities and the vast and growing gap between affluence and mass poverty, continue to haunt the present. No freedom from personal involvement in these or in the personal intimacy of love.

The subject is contemporary, but Gordimer's treatment is timeless. In No Time Like the Present, she shows herself once again a master novelist, at the height of her prodigious powers.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Date d'édition: 2012
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0374222649
• ISBN 13: 9780374222642
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 421
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible