Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black

Always exploring the boundaries of race, identity, politics, memory, sexuality, and love with fearless insight and deep compassion, Nadine Gordimer has produced another masterpiece of short fiction. From a former anti-apartheid activist’s search for his own racial identity by tracing his great-grandfather’s part in South Africa’s diamond industry to a parrot that scandalizes people with repetitions of their quarrels and clandestine love-talk, this new collection of stories eloquently probes how people are never free from their past nor spared from loss.“ As she always has, Gordimer offers her readers a rare combination of intimacy and transcendence.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Rich . . . with invention, insight, and artistry.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Nadine Gordimer is the author of eleven previous novels, as well as collections of stories and essays. She has received many awards, including the Booker Prize (for The Conservationist in 1974) and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.