Nadine Gordimer describes this collection of her non-fiction pieces as "a reflection of how I've looked at this century I've lived in". The collection of essays, articles and addresses encompass Gordimer's own evidence of the inequities of apartheid as she saw them in 1956, her account of the bans on literature still in effect in the mid-1970s, through to South Africa's emergence in 1994 as a free country. Gordimer's canvas is global and her themes are wide-ranging. She examines the impact of technology on our expanding world-view, the convergence of the moral and the political in fiction and she reassess the role of the writer in the modern world.