Living in Hope and History Notes from Our Century

"The best that can be said for this latest book is that it is, after all, only a compendium of speeches and brief articles, almost all of them written for occasions....In short, they represent the public face of the writer rather than her imagination. And what a determinedly public face it is that Gordimer presents....The general tone of this book is propagandistic....[S]he proudly calls herself a socialist, yet beats the drum for a government that has done little to improve the lot of her fellow citizens. When her peers in the literary community are writing at the tops of their voices in protest at what they see all around them, why does it seem she has forfeited her critical faculties, becoming a cheerleader...?"Living in Hope and History Notes from Our Century, with ISBN 9780747548232 and ISBN 0747548234.