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"A moving, powerful book that, in a career rich with distinguished works, could well be considered her masterpiece."—Publishers Weekly
Hillela is Nadine Gordimer's "sport of nature": a spontaneous mutation, a new type of untainted person, she is seductive and intuitively gifted for life. A Sport of Nature is the bold, sweeping story of her rise from obscurity to an unpredictable kind of political power.
Abandoned by her mother, Hillela is left to be raised by her two aunts in South Africa. At Olga's she might have acquired a taste for antiques and a style of dress to please a suitable husband. At Pauline's she might have developed a social conscience. But Hillela's betrayal of her position as a surrogate daughter so shocks both families that at seventeen she is cast adrift.
Swiftly and perilously, her life opens out. She lives as a footloose girl among political exiles on a beach in East Africa, drifting between jobs and lovers, and finally becomes the wife of a black revolutionary. Personal tragedy is ultimately the catalyst for her political development, leading her into a heroic role in the overthrow of apartheid.
This is the largest, most reverberant work of fiction we have had yet from one of the world's master novelists.
Hillela is Nadine Gordimer's "sport of nature": a spontaneous mutation, a new type of untainted person, she is seductive and intuitively gifted for life. A Sport of Nature is the bold, sweeping story of her rise from obscurity to an unpredictable kind of political power.
Abandoned by her mother, Hillela is left to be raised by her two aunts in South Africa. At Olga's she might have acquired a taste for antiques and a style of dress to please a suitable husband. At Pauline's she might have developed a social conscience. But Hillela's betrayal of her position as a surrogate daughter so shocks both families that at seventeen she is cast adrift.
Swiftly and perilously, her life opens out. She lives as a footloose girl among political exiles on a beach in East Africa, drifting between jobs and lovers, and finally becomes the wife of a black revolutionary. Personal tragedy is ultimately the catalyst for her political development, leading her into a heroic role in the overthrow of apartheid.
This is the largest, most reverberant work of fiction we have had yet from one of the world's master novelists.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Nadine Gordimer is the author of eleven previous novels, as well as collections of stories and essays. She has received many awards, including the Booker Prize (for The Conservationist in 1974) and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.
From Library Journal:
Gordimer achieves a remarkable imaginative integration of private and public experience in this powerful novel, which traces the life of a beautiful South African woman from childhood to early middle age. Born to white privilege but abandoned by her mother, who bequeaths her a rich sexuality; reared by two aunts, who embody the opposing worlds of material comfort and social consciousness; on her own by 17, and soon immersed in the first of a series of relationships whose direction no one could have predictedalways Hillela is passionately grounded in her own feelings as she becomes increasingly involved in the black struggle, nationally and internationally. Yet she remains elusive, transcending simple definition even as her story, shaped by intense moral concerns, reaches a climax of stunning grandeur. A brilliant, engrossing noveland highly recommended. BOMC dual main selection.Elise Chase, Forbes Lib., Northampton, Mass.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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- PublisherPenguin Books
- Publication date1988
- ISBN 10 0140084703
- ISBN 13 9780140084702
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages368
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