Six days later I am done, and nearly breathless with the experience. Nordimer pushed aside Kazantzakis, which is saying something because he lacks for nothing when it comes to adventure. I read it in the cafe, on the airplane, and when I got home. Summarizing the story makes no sense here, but it was an adventure for sure. Turning the cover I was grabbed by the scruff of the neck with this quote from Antonio Gramsci, “The old is dying and the new cannot be born in this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms.” Gordimer wrote it in around 1980, when that was very possible.Īs I was in South Africa in 2019, a vivid and troubling journey even then, I am now intrigued. A black servant takes his white employer and family into the bush to protect them from civil war. The cover tells says is the fictional tale of South Africa during the final stages of apartheid.

I order a tall cafe americano in the cafe inside an old factory that is now a galleria, where young people stare at their phones. Ecstatic praise from Athol Fugard and Anne Tyler. But there, slim and green, lay “July’s People” by Nadine Gordimer. Used book piles are loaded with self help, business expertise, romance novels, and political screeds. I needed something small carrying a heavy book in a backpack is no pleasure. They let you travel without moving your feet.” – Jhumpa Lahiri My further decision to pluck a cheap book to read while nursing a coffee is where fate handed me a gift, the kind that only the wanderer will receive. If you remember that Pilgrim Life is to live as if every day has an adventure available, then my decision to stroll the town makes sense.

I am pilgrim book