The House Gun (28 page)

NOVELS

The Lying Days
A World of Strangers
Occasion for Loving
The Late Bourgeois World
A Guest of Honor
The Conservationist
Burger's Daughter
July's People
A Sport of Nature
My Son's Story
None to Accompany Me
The Pickup

STORIES

The Soft Voice of the Serpent
Six Feet of the Country
Friday's Footprint
Not for Publication
Livingstone's Companions
A Soldier's Embrace
Selected Stories
Something Out There
Jump and Other Stories

ESSAYS

The Black Interpreters
The Essential Gesture—Writing, Politics and Places
(edited by Stephen Clingman)
Writing and Being

OTHER WORKS

On the Mines (with David Goldblatt)
Lifetimes Under Apartheid (with David Goldblatt)

Nadine Gordimer is the author of thirteen novels, most recently
Loot and Other Stories
(2004), nine volumes of stories, and three nonfiction collections. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“One of the great living writers. Her authority, stamped on every paragraph, makes most contemporary novels seem the pale, diluted products of insufficient insight and imagination as she shifts effortlessly from microcosmic intimacy to a vision of an entire country undergoing transformation.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

“Gordimer is a major literary figure, working at the peak of her craft … .
The House Gun
is an awe-inspiring work.”

—Cincinnati News and Observer

“
The House Gun
is like a well-cut diamond. Its many angles and planes catch the light and illuminate understanding, laying bare the emotions of a people caught in the transition from one world to another.”

—
The Orlando Sentinel

“An intellectual thriller with a soap opera engine … . Nothing short of epic.”

—
The Baltimore Sun

“As complex, compelling and memorable an account of race and class as any of her earlier works … . A brilliant, beautifully crafted novel of betrayal.”

—
Dallas Morning News

“Exquisitely drawn … passionately intelligent, it's more complicated than any detective story. Complicated not so much by plot, it's about the mystery of the human heart.”

—
USA Today

“[Gordimer] has an eye for detail, a feeling for subtle nuance, the ability to convey volumes of information with a few deft strokes that place her firmly in the company of the great novelists.”

—
The Houston Chronicle

“A tense postapartheid family drama as vital as anything she has ever written.”

—
Time

“Fascinating … . Gordimer never loses her focus on the dramatic nuances of human character, and her narrative, though related in cool prose, resonates with compassion … . The message of this powerful novel rings true.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“[Gordimer] seamlessly, beautifully combines the domestic, the moral and the political … a potent mix.”

—
The Washington Times

“An empathetic and provocative tale offering much to think about.”

—
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Intelligent, compassionate and compelling, and it has a lot to say. It touches on politics, prejudice, history, social ills, mental illness. But, at its center is the mystery of the human heart, and for this, it will be read and re-read.”

—
Memphis Commercial Appeal

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © Felix Licensing, B.V., 1998

All rights reserved

The excerpt from Constance Garnett's translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's
The Idiot
and the excerpt from H. T. Lowe-Porter's translation of Thomas Mann's
The Magic Mountain
are used with permission of Random House, London. The quotation from Richard Howard's translation of André Pieyre de Mandiarque's
The Margin
is used with permission of Calder Publications, London. The excerpt from Willa and Edwin Muir's translation of Hermann Broch's
The Sleepwalkers
is used with permission of Pantheon Books, New York. The passage from Robert Fagles's translation of Homer's
The Odyssey
is used with permission of Viking Penguin, New York.

eISBN 9780374707507

First eBook Edition : February 2011

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGUED THE HARDCOVER AS FOLLOWS:

Gordimer, Nadine.

The house gun / Nadine Gordimer.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-374-17307-9 (hc.)
ISBN 0 14 02.7820 6 (pbk.)

I. Title.
PR9369.3.G6H69 1998
823—dc21 97–28787