Loot: And Other Stories
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Masterly new fiction from the recipient of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureA startling new work: ten fictions, each a revelation of our interior lives, each entering unforeseen contexts of our contemporary world. In the title story, an earthquake exposes both an ocean bed strewn with treasure among the dead and the avarice of the town's survivors. In "The Diamond Mine," a woman recalls her youthful surreptitious sexual initiation, while she and her parents chauffeured a young soldier to his wartime embarkation. The anopleles mosquito brings death to the saunas and other playgrounds of the developed world in "The Emissary." "Mission Statement" is the story of a development agency official's idealism, the ghosts of colonial history, and a love affair with a government official that ends astoundingly. "The Generation Gap" turns the "gap" upside down when a father's bid for freedom shocks his adult children. In "Homage," one of Europe's aliens visits the grave of the politician he was paid to assassinate. In "Karma," Gordimer's inventiveness knows no bounds: in five returns to the earthly life, taking on different ages and genders, a disembodied narrator testifies to unfinished business—critically, wittily—and questions the nature of existence.The Washington PostThese stories are rarely easy. Their language is swift, often fiercely compressed. Gordimer flouts conventions of syntax, requiring the reader to reconstruct sentences. But she possesses ample creative energy to lead you through them all, and the best of them, without frank teaching, are dulce and utile both. — Jonathan Penner
Loot1Mission Statement7Visiting George67The Generation Gap73L.U.C.I.E.95Look-Alikes107The Diamond Mine121Homage133An Emissary141Karma151Notes239
