July's People | Literary Criticism & Book Review

July's People Critical Overview

Gordimer has never had a large reading audience inside South Africa. South Africans have been dissatisfied with her work or they have been kept from it through censorship. Internationally, however, Gordimer has been the interpreter of South Africa through her short stories and novels. July's People was hardly different in this respect, but it is often treated not as a novel but as prophecy.

Soon after its publication, Anne Tyler praised the novel in the New York Times Book Review. She compared the story to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and noted the strange symbols of civilization, like toilet paper. For Tyler, the novel "demonstrates With breathtaking clarity the tensions and complex interdependencies between whites and blacks in South Africa." Joan Silbur agreed in her review in the same magazine. She added that "Gordimer's novel is an intense look at a network of power relations-black to white, servant to master,...
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