Beethoven was one-sixteenth black : and other stories / Nadine Gordimer

Beethoven was one-sixteenth black -- Tape measure -- Dreaming of the dead -- A frivolous woman -- Gregor -- Safety procedures -- Mother tongue -- Allesverloren -- History -- A bene.ciary -- Alternative endings -- The first sense -- The second sense -- The third sense.

In these tantalizing and provocative short stories, Nobel prize-winning South African writer Gordimer experiments with various unusual points of view. The narrator in "Tape Measure," for example, is a tapeworm. "Dreaming of the Dead," meanwhile, is a dream about a fascinating conversation at a Chinese restaurant among the sleeper and the late Susan Sontag and Edward Said. In "Gregor," a narrator who admits to reading Kafka's diaries night after night sees a roach on the display screen of her electronic typewriter, and, with the help of a neighbor, dismantles the screen and destroys the roach. Gordimer raises the question: "What happens if something from fiction is not interiorised, but materializes? Takes in independent existence?" She can be quite playful, e.g., in "Historian," a parrot continually comments on the patrons of the restaurant where his cage hangs. The last three stories, though they all deal with the issue of adultery, arrive through the senses of sight, sound, and smell at three different outcomes.