The first comprehensive collection of Gordimer's nonfiction.

The 1950s: A South African childhood: allusions in a landscape (1954) -- Hassan in America (1955) -- Egypt revisited (1959) -- Chief Luthuli (1959) -- Apartheid (1959). The 1960s: The Congo (1961) -- Party of one (1963) -- A Bolter and the invincible summer (1963) -- Censored, banned, gagged (1963) -- Great problems in the street (1963) -- Notes of an expropriator (1964) -- Taking into account: Simone de Beauvoir's Force of circumstance (1966) -- One man living through it (1966) -- Why did Bram Fischer choose jail? (1966) -- The Short story in South Africa (1968) -- Madagascar (1969). The 1970s: Merci Dieu, it changes: Accra and Abidjan (1971) -- Pack up, black man (1971) -- Unchaining poets (1972) -- The New black poets (1973) -- A Writer's freedom (1976) -- English-language literature and politics in South Africa (1976) -- Letter from Soweto (1976) -- What being a South African means to me: address at the University of Cape Town (1977) -- Transkei: a vision of two blood-red suns (1978) -- Relevance and commitment (1979) -- Pula!: Botswana (1979). The 1980s: The Prison-house of colonialism: Ruth First's and Ann Scott's Olive Schreiner (1980) -- Letter from the 153rd state (1980) -- The South African censor: no change (1981) -- Unconfessed history: Alan Paton's Ah, but your land is beautiful (1982) -- Mysterious incest: Patrick White's Flaws in the grass: a self-portrait (1982) -- The Child is the man: Wole Soyinka's Ake: the years of childhood (1982) -- Living in the interregnum (1983) -- The Idea of gardening: J.M. Coetzee's The life and times of Michael K (1984) -- New notes from underground: Breyten Breytenbach's Mouroir (1984) -- The Essential gesture (1985) -- Letter from Johannesburg (1985) -- Huddleston: a sign (1988) -- The Gap between the writer and the reader (1989) -- Censorship--the final solution: the case of Salman Rushdie (1989) -- The African pot (1989). The 1990s: A Writer's vital gift to a free society: The Satanic verses (1990) -- Freedom struggles out of the chrysalis (1990) -- Sorting the images from the man: Nelson Mandela (1990) -- Censorship and its aftermath (1990) -- Joseph Roth: labyrinth of empire and exile (1991) -- Turning the page: African writers on the threshold of the twenty-first century (1992) -- Beyond myth: Mandela's mettle (1993) -- Rising to the ballot (1994) -- Letter from South Africa (1995) -- Cannes epilogue (1995) -- Remembering Barney Simon (1995) -- Our century (1995) -- The Status of the writer in the world today: Which world? Whose world? (1997) -- The Poor are always with us: the eradication of poverty (1997) -- From a correspondence with Kenzaburo Oe (1998) -- Octavio Paz: poet-archer (1999) -- When art meets politics (1999) -- A Letter to future generations (1999) -- Five years into freedom: my new South African identity (1999) -- Hemingway's expatriates: a way of looking at the world (1999). The 2000s: (2002) -- (2000) -- Africa's plague, and everyone's (2000) -- What news on the Rialto? (2001) -- The Dwelling place of words (2001) -- The Entitlement approach (2001) -- The Ballad of the Fifth Avenue Hotel (2001) -- Joseph Conrad and Almayer's folly (2002) -- A (2003) -- William Plomer and Turbott Wolfe Coincidence of wills? (2003) -- Witness--past or present? (2003) -- Fear eats the soul (2003) -- Living with a writer (2003) -- Edward Said (2003) -- With them you never know: Albert Memmi Chinua Achebe and Things fall apart Home truths from the past: Machiavelli or Erasmus? (2005) -- Atlantis (2003) -- Thirst (2003) -- Questions journalists don't ask (2003) -- "To you I can": Gustave Flaubert's November (2004) -- Leo Tolstoy and The death of Ivan Ilyich (2005) -- Susan Sontag (2005) -- Witness: the inward testimony (2006). Personal Proust (2006) -- Desmond Tutu as I know him (2006) -- Lust and death: Philip Roth's Everyman (2006) -- Faith, reason and war (2006) -- Naguib Mahfouz's Three novels of ancient Egypt (2007) -- Experiencing two absolutes (2008) -- The Lion in literature (2003) --

A comprehensive collection of the author's nonfiction works ranges from reports on the 1976 Soweto uprising and observations of Zimbabe at the dawn of independence to portraits of such figures as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.