This is an Africa only someone who has lived there could manage with any accuracy. Depressing much of the time, Gordimer shows us intimate aspects of realistic/everyday characters and why they make the choices they do. We may try to judge them for those choices, but Gordimer insists we must first live in their shoes. ( )

The late bourgeois world by Nadine Gordimer is a short, brave novel that reads like an entirely sincere and authentic chronicle of Apartheid in South Africa. The novel explores the theme of courage, and taking a (moral) stand in a political and dangerous situation.

Liz lives with Graham. They are both opposed to Apartheid, but their resistance is passive. Max, Liz's former husband, was a militant and radical freedom fighter, who spent time in prison, as he was caught with self-fabricated explosives. After his release, Max committed suicide. Liz has difficulty convincing her son that his father was not a loser, and that in fact, he was a hero, who fought on the right side.

Liz loyalty to the cause is put to the test when she is asked to help the movement. What she is asked to do seems easy, a means to make a contribution to the movement. The risk is small, but the risk is there.

The title of the novel, The late bourgeois world, is explained through a reference to a book, that postulates that one world must necessarily exist in relation to another world: "Defining one, you assume the existence of the other. So both are part of a total historical phenomenon." (p. 101)

In 1966, the title of the book, and indeed its content, must have had quite a world of significance added to it. The book itself could be considered a self-fabricated explosive. For it's unmistakable political message, it was banned in South Africa for more than a decade.

The power of The late bourgeois world can still be felt, even though Apartheid ended in South Africa. However, the books theme of moral courage, is timeless. ( )

South Africa is a country completely outside my normal range, but in the past year, it seems to keep popping up in my reading in a completely unplanned fashion.
The Late Bourgeois World is my first book by Nadine Gordimer, whom I had always lumped together mentally with Doris Lessing, in neighbouring Rhodesia*, but now that I've actually read a book by Gordimer, I've reconsidered. There are definitely similar concerns, but the style is quite different.

As this novel opens, Liz Van Den Sandt receives a telegram informing her that her former husband Max has committed suicide by driving into the ocean. It's Saturday and Liz calmly rearranges her routine to drive to their son's boarding school to break the news. As she drives out into the country and back, and later in the day home in Johannesburg running normal weekend errands, she reflects on their life together, on the ways of white South Africans, rich, smug and secure under apartheid. In the café

It was almost closing time for the shops and the place was crowded with young women in expensive trousers and boots, older women in elegant suits and furs newly taken out of storage, men in the rugged weekend outfit of company directors...

A woman near her "...exactly like Max's mother, pink-and-white as good diet and cosmetics could make her..." bemoans someone's lack of a silver cigarette case for evening use. Liz's reflections rekindle her hatred of this privileged class, the class she had attained through her marriage to Max:

...we bathed and perfumed and depilated white ladies, on whose wombs the sanctity of the white race is entombed! What concoction of musk and boiled petals can disguise the dirt done in the name of that sanctity?

Liz and Max had devoted their life together to fighting against such a system, but each was defeated in different ways and the rage could not be sustained. Gordimer's anger though still has a punch. Her contrasting of Liz's outward actions and inner thoughts is brilliant. It must have been shocking to read her words in 1966.

Safely back at home after her day out, Liz skilfully lies to her lover about her evening plans. The novel shifts gears abruptly here, more like an unexpected tilt actually than a smooth shift. Her evening is in marked contrast to her outwardly decorous day. The idea put to her by her dinner companion must have truly worried many of those readers fifty years ago, while the remainder were probably inspired.

Like most novels of protest read after reform has come, at least in theory, there is a certain dated feel, redeemed somewhat by seeing the progress make in the intervening years, although acknowledging how much is left to be done. That didn't detract from Gordimer's writing. It still has immense power. I would like to try something else by her.

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*now Zimbabwe