For years, it has been what is called a "deteriorating situation." Now it is war. All over South Africa, cities are battlegrounds, and radio and television stations are under siege. Bam and Maureen Smales take up their servant July's suggestion and drive with their children to his remote home village. For fifteen years, July has been the decently treated black servant, totally dependent on them. Now, he becomes their host, their savior, and their keeper. Suddenly facing a hunted life of bare subsistence, owing their survival to July, the Smales are forced to look at him and at one another in an entirely new light. They find life utterly changed and harboring different dread and hope for each individual.
"Gordimer's art has achieved and sustained a rare beauty. Her prose has a density and sparsity that one finds in the greatest writers."
New Leader
"Gordimer's finely wrought novel works as both a survival story and a psychological tour de force…Both aspects are enhanced by Nadia May's taut narration, especially her interpretations of July and his former employers."
Library Journal
"May's reading is fully voiced. She effectively reads words of small peevish children, and she catches various moods and levels of feeling by the adults in the story."
