Jump and Other Stories - by Nadine Gordimer (Paperback)

About the Book

A new collection of short stories from the author of My Son's Story. In 16 stories ranging from the dynamics of family life to the worldwide confusion of human values, Nobel Prize-winner Nadine Gordimer gives readers access to many lives in places as far apart as suburban London, Mozambique, a mythical island, and South Africa.

Book Synopsis

Jump and Other Stories collects fifteen thematically and geographically wide-ranging tales from political activist and Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer, with settings ranging from suburban London to Mozambique.

With unflinching depictions of how South Africa's apartheid policies drove racial inequality, wartime atrocities, marital strife, and family struggles, Gordimer's stories feature characters coping with morality in unjust socieites--uncovering both the beauty and tragedy found in human interactions with each other and with the natural world.

Review Quotes

"A gallery of riveting tales . . . Gordimer's long and prolific career has left little doubt of her mastery of the art of fiction." --The Washington Post Book World

"Gordimer has rarely been more profound or more quietly brilliant than in these exquisitely subtle stories." --Publishers Weekly

"Readers of Ms. Gordimer's fiction know that the riveting details, the epiphanies scattered throughout the narrative that shock and surprise, function within a larger vision. This expansive vision, its moral power and artistic integrity, are what elevate her fiction above that of most of her contemporaries." --The New York Times Book Review

"Gordimer's stories are captivating, in the literal sense of holding in thrall the reader's entire attention. " --Chicago Tribune

About the Author

Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014), the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in a small South African town. Her first book, a collection of stories, was published when she was in her early twenties; she went on to publish more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction.

Her novels include the Booker Prize-winning The Conservationist, Commonwealth Writers' Prize-winning The Pickup, and No Time Like the Present. A World of Strangers, The Late Bourgeois World, and the award-winning Burger's Daughter were originally banned in South Africa. Gordimer's short story collections include Loot , Jump and Other Stories, and Something Out There. She also published literary and political essay collections such as The Essential Gesture; Writing and Being, the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures she gave at Harvard in 1994; and Living in Hope and History.

Ms. Gordimer was a vice president of PEN International and an executive member of the Congress of South African Writers. She was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in Great Britain and an honorary member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was also a Commandeur of l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France). She held fourteen honorary degrees from universities including Harvard, Yale, the University of Leuven in Belgium, Oxford University, and Cambridge University.