Reviews for A World of Strangers

The average rating for A World of Strangers based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-05-22 00:00:00 Robert Mcdonald Three and a half stars. Gordimer's second novel is not essential, but worth a read nonetheless. The first-person narrator is Toby Hood, a young Englishman who takes a publishing job in South Africa and becomes awakened to the tragic consequences of apartheid. Hood is not entirely convincing; he sometimes sounds like a mouthpiece for Gordimer's own very insightful but somewhat heavy-handed reflections. Also, not much happens until the last fifty pages or so, except for a succession of high-minded parties where people talk about politics and analyze their friends. But the secondary characters are diverse and very interesting, especially Steven Sitole, a pragmatic black South African who longs to be an individual in a society that denies him the full range of his humanity. Gordimer is one of the few white authors from any country who crossed the color line so convincingly back in the fifties and sixties. This novel was published a year before Saul Bellow's execrable Henderson the Rain King, which also purports to be an outsider's encounter with Africa. But if Gordimer's book is a flawed but ultimately moving and illuminating depiction of the tensions within a dying colonial society, Bellow's book is just a racist schoolboy fantasy.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-11-28 00:00:00 Andy Lyons Um jovem ingl�s vai para Joanesburgo como agente editorial para visitar livrarias e promover vendas de livros. Miss�o n�o cumprida pois passa o tempo em jantares, festas e ca�adas com a alta sociedade sul-africana. _____________ Pr�mio Nobel da Literatura 1991 Nadine Gordimer nasceu na �frica do Sul em 20 de Novembro de 1923 e morreu na �frica do Sul em 13 de Julho de 2014.