In this collection of new stories, Nadine Gordimer crosses the frontiers of politics, memory, sexuality, and love with the fearless insight that is the hallmark of her writing. In the title story, a middle-aged academic who had been an anti-apartheid activist embarks on an unadmitted pursuit of the possibilities for his own racial identity in his great-grandfather's fortune-hunting interlude of living rough on diamond diggings in South Africa, his young wife far away in London. "Dreaming of the Dead" conjures up a lunch in a New York Chinese restaurant where Susan Sontag and Edward Said return in surprising new avatars as guests in the dream of a loving friend. The historian in "History" is a parrot who confronts people with the scandalizing voice reproduction of quarrels and clandestine love-talk on which it has eavesdropped. "Alternative Endings" considers the way writers make arbitrary choices in how to end stories -- and offers three, each relating the same situation, but with a different resolution, arrived at by the three senses: sight, sound, and smell. Nadine Gordimer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, is the author of fourteen novels, nine volumes of stories, and three nonfiction collections. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. David Colacci is an actor and director. Most recently, he was a resident director and actor at the Cleveland Playhouse. He has directed and performed in prominent theaters nationwide for the past thirty years. His credits include roles from Shakespeare to Albee, as well as extensive work on new plays. Susan Ericksen is an actress and a voice-over artist. She has recorded over sixty audiobooks for such authors as Nora Roberts, Alice Hoffman, Nadine Gordimer, Stuart Woods, and Charlotte Bronte.
