Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist is a piece of fiction that feels very real, taking place in a South Africa where unexpected upheavals are becoming an expected evil. Mehring is rich: he has all the privileges and possessions that South Africa has to offer, but his possessions refuse to remain objects. His wife, son and mistress leave him; his foreman and workers become increasingly indifferent to his stewardship; even the land rises up, as drought, then flood, destroy his farm. As the upheaval in Mehring’s world increasingly resembles that in the country as a whole, it becomes clear that only a seismic shift in ideas and concrete action can avert annihilation. A winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, where she was recognised as a woman “who through her magnificent writing has been of very great benefit to humanity”, Gordimer shows us once again why she is such an effective moral, racial, and political activist.