Another early Booker Prize winner from the eventual Nobel laureate from South Africa Nadine Gordimer. I have to confess, I have read a few things by Gordimer and have not really liked any of them. I actively disliked another of her novels and just generally disregarded this one. Part of my issue is that even as much as I like JM Coetzee, it bothers me that the entire continent of Africa has had three laureates and two of them have been white, and if you add the one foot in Rhodesia/one foot in England nature of Doris Lessing (who is incredibly worthy of a Nobel, please don’t get me wrong), three of four. And so if I am looking at Gordimer’s work in comparison to so many other talented writers working today or when Gordimer was alive I don’t quite see it.
So the same happens here in terms of a novel that wins the Booker Prize.
Regardless, this is a novel about a rich farmer from far afield from South Africa, coming to the country, buying up a lot of land and finding that his ventures do not particularly inspire locals to work for him, be loyal to him, or really treat him with much regard. This is not a particularly novel idea, even in 1975 when the novel was published, and the results are somewhere between typical/fully expected to unnecessarily centered on whiteness, a concept that has shown up (regardless of the amount of liberal anxiety this includes) in other Gordimer works.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Conservationist-Nadine-Gordimer/dp/0140047166/ref=sr_1_1?crid=55L8G6DTU0RA&keywords=the+conservationist+by+nadine+gordimer&qid=1567018860&s=gateway&sprefix=the+conservationist%2Caps%2C266&sr=8-1)