"Nadine Gordimer has become, in the whole solid body of her work, the literary voice and conscience of her society," declared Maxwell Geismar in Saturday Review. In numerous novels, short stories, and essays, she has written of her South African homeland and its apartheid government--under which its blacks, coloreds, and whites suffered for nearly half a century. "This writer . . . has made palpable the pernicious, pervasive character of that country's race laws, which not only deny basic rights to most people but poison many relationships," maintained Miriam Berkley in Publishers Weekly. Gordimer's insight, integrity, and compassion inspire critical admiration. "She has mapped out the social, political and emotional geography of that troubled land with extraordinary passion and precision," says Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, observing in a later essay that "taken chronologically, her work not only reflects her own evolving political consciousness and maturation as an artist--an...