The writer sometimes must risk both the state's indictment of treason, and the liberation forces' complaint of lack of blind commitment. As a human being, no writer can stoop to the lie of Manichean "balance." The devil always has lead in his shoes, when placed on his side of the scale. Yet . . . the writer must take the right to explore, warts and all, both the enemy and the beloved comrade in arms, since only a try for the truth makes sense of being, only a try for the truth edges toward justice just ahead of Yeats's beast slouching to be born. -from the 1991 Nobel Prize Lecture

Internationally celebrated for her novels, Nadine Gordimer has devoted much of her life and fiction to the political struggles of the Third World, the New World, and her native South Africa. Living in Hope and History is an on-the-spot record of her years as a public figure-an observer of apartheid and its aftermath, a member of the ANC, and the champion of dissident writers everywhere. Including her reminiscences of Nelson Mandela and Gnter Grass, her correspondence with the Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe, and her reflections on race in Africa and America, these passionate writings lay bare the preoccupations of a lifetime.

Notes

Nadine Gordimer's most recent work includes None to Accompany Me (FSG, 1994) and The House Gun (FSG, 1998). She has received many awards, including the Booker Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.