323 pages
English language
Published April 25, 2005 by Bloomsbury.
Suspense fiction. Mehring is rich. He has all the privileges and possessions that South Africa has to offer, but his possessions refuse to remain objects. His wife, son and mistress leave him; his foreman and workers become increasingly indifferent to his stewardship; even the land rises up, as drought, then flood, destroy his farm. As the upheaval in Mehring's world increasingly resembles that in the country as a whole, it becomes clear that only a seismic shift in ideas and concrete action can avert annihilation.
Dark, droning novel by Gordimer about South Africa, land, race and culture. Mehring, the protagonist, is losing everything that he has, and that he is, lost in his own history and his obsessions with ownership. The book builds to a bombastic climax in the penultimate chapter where all the ghosts of the story appear at once.
