[Gordimer's] knowledge of the politics of her country is strong and her sense of the politicalness of life profound, but her power resides in the force of sexual feeling that permeates her work and makes of racist South Africa a metaphor for the stunning sorrow of caged and harnessed lives.

It is interesting, in this sense at least, to compare Gordimer with V. S. Naipaul … whose work covers the same territory, so to speak—that is, colonized Africa, the decay of empire, rising black fury—but whose sense of things is the nether side of Gordimer's. In Naipaul there is neither sorrow nor pity, neither tenderness nor the curious calm of deeply felt pain. Naipaul's Africa is all cold murderous dread—sexual hysteria, depression, and terror. His sentences, each one spare and plain, add up to electricity on the page….

Gordimer's sentences are also spare and plain, but...