SOURCE: Callil, Carmen. “Disgrace.” New Statesman 132, no. 4643 (23 June 2003): 50.

In the following review, Callil notes the stark subject matter and lack of punctuation in the stories of Loot, arguing that the tales are difficult to read.

Nadine Gordimer's exceptional gifts as a writer—her intelligence, her moral sense—have been comprehensively acknowledged by Nobel and Booker prizes and by the critics, who have rightly placed her as one of the great among us. But you have to sit up straight to read her, open your mind, extend your understanding, watch every word. It's worth it. The stories in this collection [Loot, and Other Stories] are both like and unlike her novels. In the latter, she lets character blossom more fully and the harshness of her vision is eased out a little by a longer narrative. The Gordimer of these stories inhabits a stern world.

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