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The drastic consequences of a life-saving treatment force a man to question everything he knows, in Nadine Gordimer’s absorbing novel.When an ecologist in Africa is diagnosed with cancer and prescribed treatment that makes him radioactive, his suddenly fragile existence makes him question his life for the first time. He is especially struck by the contradictions between his work as a conservationist and that of his wife, an advertising agency executive. When Paul moves in with his parents to protect his wife and young son from radiation, the strange nature of his condition leads his mother to face her own past."The 1991 Nobel winner’s 14th novel is one of her most provocative books: an unsparing analysis of the permutations — and ramifications — of commitment and fidelity, endangerment and survival... Yes, this is a talky novel, but if the conscience of South Africa hasn’t earned the right to have her say, who has? One of our great writers at her challenging, blistering best. Mandatory reading." - Kirkus ReviewsNadine Gordimer was a South African writer, political activist, and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity". Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes.

Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer follows the inner lives of characters confronted by unforeseen circumstances. Paul Bannerman, an ecologist in South Africa, believes he understands the trajectory of his life, with the usual markers of vocation and marriage. But when he's diagnosed with thyroid cancer and, after surgery, prescribed treatment that will leave him radioactive-and for a period a danger to others-he begins to question, as Auden wrote, "what Authority gives / existence its surprise." As Paul recuperates in the garden of his childhood home, he enters an unthinkable existence and another kind of illumination-a process that will irrevocably change not only his life but the lives of his wife and parents. BACKCOVER: "More profound, more searching, more accomplished than what she was writing earlier in her long and distinguished career."
-Los Angeles Times

"Nadine Gordimer's work is endowed with an emotional genius so palpable one experiences it like a finger pressing steadily upon the prose."
-The Village Voice

"A timely novel and a provocative one: a novel to enjoy and ponder, as its characters all do, the dizzying complications inherent in human choice."
-The Washington Times

"I will always be grateful for the presence in the world of Nadine Gordimer, who has delivered in literature a South Africa most of us could not have known without her."
-Gail Caldwell, The Boston Globe

Publishers Weekly

The phrase "late work" is usually reserved for masters, and it is appropriate to this 14th novel from Gordimer, whose cruel meditations on mortality and commitment are enacted within two marriages a generation apart. Paul Bannerman, a 35-year-old activist ecologist who works to prevent development of the South African bush, is diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Following radiation treatment, he stays with his parents, Adrian and Lyndsay; his ad exec wife, Berenice (Benni), and toddler son, Nicholas, visit him, but must avoid contact with Paul while he's radioactive. During Paul's stay, Gordimer sounds the depths of Paul and Benni's connection (shallow but sometimes tender) and replays Adrian and Lyndsay's turbulent (but on the surface, placid) past together. Paul and Benni's professional lives are at odds (she does ads for developers); Adrian chucked a potential career as an archeologist to advance Lyndsay's as a lawyer. When Paul returns home, change comes very rapidly-and dramatically-for everyone. Gordimer's narrator is chilly, remote and omniscient, toying with the characters and taking shots at them at almost every opening, particularly the two career-women: "How girlishly exciting it must have been," says the narrator of Lyndsay's past affair, begun at a conference. Paul's vulnerable, mortal body and everyone's life choices are relentlessly, tauntingly picked over in a manner that is spare and quick to the point of offhandedness. The result is a lacerating novel, one in which conflicted professional and domestic lives are played for all their contradictory possibility. (Dec.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Paul Bannerman, an ecologist in South Africa, is a committed environmentalist fighting a huge nuclear reactor project with its danger of leaking radiation. He beleives he understands the trajectory of his life, with the usual markers of vocation and marriage. But when he is diagnosed with thyroid cancer and, after surgery, prescribed treatment that will leave him radioactive-and for a period a danger to others- he begins to question, as Auden wrote, "what Authority gives/ existence its surprise." As Paul recuperates in the garden of his childhood home, he enters an unthinkable existence and another kind of illumination- a process that will irrevocably change not only his life but the lives of those closest to him Paul Bannerman, an ecologist living in South Africa, begins to re-examine his life after he is diagnosed with thyroid cancer and begins radiation treatments--an isolating experience that forces him to confront his relationships with family and friends