Nadine Gordimer
Crimes of Conscience: Selected Short Stories by Nadine Gordimer, the 1991 Nobel Prize laureate, is a collection of eleven stories set in South Africa. The stories vary from first person point of view to third person point of view. They all have in common characters who are put in the position of having to make a difficult choice, one which frequently leads to a crime of conscience and its concomitant feelings of guilt.
Gordimer’s characters are caught up in a South Africa in the grip of the violence and political turmoil of apartheid. With depth and breadth, she explores the subtleties and nuances of her characters’ emotions against this background. Her characters face a moral quandary and must choose. Why they choose to do what they do is sometimes not clear even to them. But in one form or another, they are all plagued with guilt for the choices they make.
The situations vary. A wife betrays her husband’s friend to the authorities. A white farmer’s son murders the infant daughter he has fathered with a black farm hand. A former guerilla leader remembers only too late how much he owes to the white lawyer and his wife for opening their home to him. A village chief reports the presence of strangers in his village with devastating consequences. A man reveals to his lover he has been sent to spy on her. The destruction of termites and their queen under the floorboards of a home takes on symbolic significance, haunting a child well into her adult years. A refugee grandmother must choose between saving her spouse or her grandchildren.
Gordimer’s movement from one situation to another, from one setting to another, and from one voice to another seems effortless. Her characters are authentic. They are complex and deeply felt. Her observations on people in morally complicated situations are honest, astute, and depicted with a sensitivity to their predicament and their weaknesses.
There are no easy answers to the dilemmas posed in these stories. Set against the background of an apartheid South Africa where systemic racism is the rule of law, Nadine Gordimer’s stories remind us that living under an oppressive government takes a tragic toll on people’s lives and thrusts them in moral dilemmas where they feel they have no choice but to commit crimes of conscience.
Very highly recommended.