Nadine Gordimer describes this collection of her non-fiction pieces as a
reflection of how I've looked at this century I've lived in. The
collection of essays, articles and addresses encompass Gordimer's own
evidence of the inequities of apartheid as she saw them in 1956, her
account of the bans on literature still in effect in the mid-1970s,
through to South Africa's emergence in 1994 as a free country.
Gordimer's canvas is global and her themes are wide-ranging. She
examines the impact of technology on our expanding world-view, the
convergence of the moral and the political in fiction and she reassess
the role of the writer in the modern world.