SOURCE: A review of Something Out There, in The Hudson Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 4, Winter, 1984–85, pp. 619-21.

In the following excerpt, Kearns discusses the politics of Gordimer's fiction in Something Out There.

… Nadine Gordimer's Something Out There is a collection of nine short stories and the title piece, a long novella that might have had greater impact if published separately. Gordimer is a writer of political fiction whose assurance has become finer with time. Her South Africa is a country torn apart not by "racial problems" or "terrorism," but by what she wants us to know is nothing less than civil war. Lush patches of safety in this battlefield are supported by a "grand illusion," and are under attack from enemies within and without. It is a country from which so many have "skipped"—a word with reverberations: "This one or that has skipped; the laconic phrase contains...