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Nadine Gordimer

The Late Bourgeois World Paperback – February 24, 1983

by Nadine Gordimer (Author)

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When her ex-husband commits suicide after the failure of his anti-government activities, Liz Van Den Sandt struggles to decide whether to become involved in the South African Black nationalist movement

Print length

96 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Books
Publication date

February 24, 1983
Dimensions

7 x 1 x 5 inches
ISBN-10

0140056149
ISBN-13

978-0140056143
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Doris Lessing
901
Paperback
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Reissue edition (February 24, 1983)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 96 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140056149
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140056143
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.68 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 1 x 5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,649,410 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #572 in African Literature (Books)
- #72,571 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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4.2 out of 5

11 global ratings

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saa

My book club is reading this book in tandem with ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 19, 2017

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My book club is reading this book in tandem with Cry, the Beloved Country. They are set about 20 years apart (Cry, the Beloved Country in 1946 and The Late Bourgeois World in 1965, I think). It's instructive and informative to read them together. The Late Bourgeois World is a very spare novel, really almost a long short story, in which race relations and interpersonal relations in apartheid South Africa are explored in the context of one woman's personal and political engagement. The action all takes place within 24 hours and illuminates the variety of ways white South Africans chose to deal with apartheid and race.

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gary thompson

Best writer of her generation!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 7, 2015

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The 5 stars says it all! Great writer, great piece of fact based fiction and great subject that could use exposure. She's a Nobel Prize winner for a reason.

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M. Buzalka

A Day in the Life

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 16, 2015

The Late Bourgeois World (1966) is a short novella—under a hundred pages—by South African author Nadine Gordimer that chronicles one day in the life of its protagonist, Elisabeth Van Den Sandt, a divorced woman in her late 20s who has a young son at boarding school. As the book opens, Elisabeth has just learned that her ex-husband, an anti-apartheid activist who had spent time in jail for a failed bombing and then became a state witness against his former colleagues in the movement, had committed suicide.

We then move with Elisabeth through her day as she visits her son at school to break the news (the boy and his father weren’t especially close so it isn’t particularly traumatic), visits with her senile grandmother at her old age home, has a couple interactions with her boyfriend, a successful lawyer, and finally hosts dinner for a black activist she has becomes friends with through her husband. All through this we get her thoughts and fill in her background.

Meanwhile, around her the world is changing, symbolized most dramatically by news in the papers about an American astronaut doing a space walk (the reference is presumably to Edward White, the first American to exit a capsule in space, on June 3, 1965). The title phrase is referenced at one point as coming from an Eastern journal to describe the passing era.

The writing is crisp and the narrative flows. Gordimer, who apparently preferred the short story format despite having to this point also produced three full-length novels, gives us a good sense of Elisabeth, her world and her life to this point. She is somewhat smug but basically decent woman confused about which way to go in her life. Her relationship with her boyfriend promises security and stability—important especially as she her son to consider—but she is also drawn to the radical politics of her former husband and his associates, driven by a sense of justice (and a bit of moral superiority that comes out when she contemplates her and her husband’s parents and their friends). In these spare number of pages, the reader gets a clear view of what life in South Africa for a middle class white woman was like in the mid 1960s.

I had really liked Gordimer’s first novel, the highly autobiographical The Lying Days, but was disappointed by its two successors, A World of Strangers and Occasion for Loving, both of which I thought left plot and drama potential on the table. That’s not a problem with The Late Bourgeois World, which is tight as a drum. If you want to start on Gordimer, a Nobel Prize winner about three decades after this book came out, The Late Bourgeois World would be a great place to begin.

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An admirer of Saul

The History Woman

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 10, 2013

Elisebeth, ex wife of Max van den Sandt-the son of a prominent politician-receives a telegram informing her of his suicide. As she reflects on his failed life as a "revolutionary",his imprisonment for a bomb plot and betrayal of his comrades,she is approached by one of his old aquaintences in need of a white persons bank account to launder in funds from abroad....
Gordimer's story is firmly set in the year it was written (1966)at the height of the repressive apartheid regime in South Africa and the 'emergency powers'.It maybe loses a bit of its power as that era is long past-though its echoes still reverberate-but what makes Gordimers work so vital is that it records events and South African society as it was then;particularily the gulf between black and white's wanting change (and for that matter the gulf between black and black,white and white) This is an historical record as well as a first rate novel.
With whites, there are the pseudo liberals who want change through constitutional and political channels (knowing full well this wont happen; their pontificating acts only as a salve for their guilt)to the far left radicals who see the black mans struggle as part of the world wide communist struggle, that the black man sees as just another white mans politics in Africa.In fact, the only real use to "the cause" that the whites have is their foothold in white society-as Elisebeth finds out with Luke's need of a white bank account.
For the blacks,there is the very real struggle,but what the final ambition is is vague. Some want to expel all whites and seize the wealth (Mugabeism?)or have a naive idea that change will suddenly mean cars and money like the whites have. For all there is no clear idea of what will come after "revolution" which is the main fault of all "revolutions";this lack of vision the reason why all revolutions end up in extreme bloodshed and/or a worse political atmosphere for people to live in (as in Zimbabwe/Iran/Russia for eg)
Just 90 odd pages long, this novel is hugely accessable,a perfect taster for Gordimers writing and an important historical document of the rapidly shrinking world of the 20th century where old ideas and life styles (that of apartheid and segregation) are dying out in a world that was (in 1966) sending men to walk in space-as the novel refers to-and ultimately to the moon. Where does apartheid stand in a world like that? Thought provoking and vital.

4 people found this helpful

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JohnnnySmallls

Captures Mood of Johannesburg

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 23, 2011

This is an odd work, perhaps because it is Gordimer's most autobiographical novel. There are few characters one can really identify with, but it is interesting to see how the author captures the disaffected of Johannesburg at a critical point in South African history. In sum, this is a decent first novel but little else.

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JohnnnySmallls

A Moment in Johannesburg's Life

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 4, 2011

For a book that fails to garner the praise of her more famous works, this is actually quite good. The novel captures 1950s Johannesburg better than anything else out there -- the kind of intellectual stupor the country went into before Sharpeville.

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The Late Bourgeois World Paperback – February 24, 1983

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