Beethoven Was OneSixteenth Black, an..., Nadine Gordimer
Beethoven Was OneSixteenth Black, an..., Nadine Gordimer
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Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black, and Other Stories

Author: Nadine Gordimer

Narrator: David Colacci, Susan Ericksen

Unabridged: 5 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/07/2015

Synopsis

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 Sa├»d 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.

About Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) was born in South Africa. She received numerous international prizes for her writing, including the Modern Language Association Award, the Bennett Award, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. She was given honorary degrees by Yale, Harvard, and other universities and was honored by the French government with the decoration Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

About David Colacci

David Colacci has been an actor and a director for over thirty years, performing coast-to-coast in lead roles of plays by a variety of playwrights, from Shakespeare to Sam Shepard to Steve Martin. He has worked as a narrator for over fifteen years, during which time he has read the works of such authors as Jules Verne, Henry Adams, John Irving, Michael Chabon, and John Lescroart. He has won AudioFile Earphones Awards, earned Audie nominations, and been included in Best of the Year lists by such publications as Publishers Weekly, AudioFile magazine, and Library Journal. David was a resident actor/director with the Cleveland Play House for eight years and has been artistic director of the Hope Summer Rep Theater since 1992. He currently lives in New York with his wife, narrator and actress Susan Ericksen, and his children, Mario and Elena.

About Susan Ericksen

Susan Ericksen is an Audie Award–winning narrator who has recorded more than 200 books. The winner of multiple Earphone Awards for both fiction and nonfiction, she is also an actress who has performed in regional theaters across the country.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Greg on September 28, 2017

An interesting, small collection of short stories assembled around the general themes of loss, mortality and acceptance. The stories include: a South African university professor contemplating his roots; the “autobiographical” reflections of a tape worm; an imagined lunch the author has at a Chinese......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth (Alaska) on February 06, 2020

The second story is called "Tape Measure" and is a story told in the first person (!) by a tape worm. Needless to say (but I will anyway), I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I had only read Gordimer's July's People. I didn't think there was any weirdness in that and I definitely wasn't expect......more

Goodreads review by Jason on August 28, 2008

First off, Nadine Gordimer is an incredible writer. One of the most amazing linguistic architects I have read in some time. Her sentences, if you can call them that, traipse, meander, drive, flit, curve, circle, dead-end and serpentine in so many different directions in only a line or two. An amazin......more

Goodreads review by Shane on June 21, 2019

As Nadine Gordimer aged, she seemed to chart her own form of literature. This collection of short stories uses an array of complex sentences built with an unusual syntax that doesn’t flow (well, at least for this reader), has sparse dialogue (some stories have none) and has the point of view of a sc......more

Goodreads review by Conor on August 09, 2018

When in South Africa, one has to read some of her most formidable authors, no? Well, I thought so. After reading (and liking) her "July's People," I picked this up. Gordimer has a way with words. She puts things succinctly, viscerally. She captures the fraught nature of race in South Africa--not a s......more

Quotes

“Gordimer is a precise, politically astute writer whose novels, story, and nonfiction works are charged with sprightly humor, sudden insights, and fearless candor.” Elle

“It is Gordimer’s special skill that she can both make us feel the distinct yearnings of these characters, where nothing else matters, and allow us to stand back and perceive the parts they play in a larger collective pattern. As she always has, Gordimer offers her readers a rare combination of intimacy and transcendence.” The New York Times Book Review

“Nadine Gordimer pushes buttons and the boundaries of race, politics, and sex.” Vanity Fair

“On nearly every page there’s evidence of Gordimer’s intellectual rigor, as well as the upright discipline all serious writers possess.” The Los Angeles Times

“Gordimer offer[s] a staccato demonstration of how people’s origins, inheritances and histories—and the loss of them—are inescapable…The results are terrifying, sometimes acidly funny and often beautiful.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“No slick irony, no heavy messages; as always, the mix of intimacy and politics stirs everything up.” Booklist

“Executed with finesse and power” Kirkus

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