SOURCE: "Pervaded by the Strangeness of Africa," in The New York Times Book Review, May 23, 1965, pp. 5, 47.

In the following excerpt, Mitchell focuses on Gordimer's narrative technique in Not for Publication.

It would be futile to look for a flowering of experimental writing among the fiction published about Africa today. The continent is dominated by race war and the state of the Republic of South Africa is such that it dictates a mood—and even a style—to those who try to write of it. Almost every public action in that country, and many private actions, too, add impetus to a revolution which seems as inevitable as anything in history.

Everyone who writes about Africa is affected by this shadow. In such a situation a novel is hard to make. A novel takes too much time to write, a novel takes too much time in which to unfold. Perhaps...