A house gun, like a house cat: a fact of ordinary life, today. How else can you defend yourself against losing your hi-fi equipment, your TV set and computer?

The respected Executive Director of an insurance company, Harald, and his doctor wife, Claudia, are faced with something that could never happen to them: their son, Duncan, has committed murder.

What kind of loyalty do a mother and father owe a son who has committed the unimaginable horror? How could he have ignored the sanctity of human life? What have they done to influence his character; how have they failed him?

Nadine Gordimer's new novel is a passionate narrative of the complex manifestations of that final test of human relations we call love -- between lovers of all kinds, and parents and children. It moves with the restless pace of living itself; if it is a parable of present violence, it is also an affirmation of the will to reconciliation that starts where it must, between individual men and women.

About the Author
Nadine Gordimer is the author of eleven previous novels and collections of stories and essays; her most recent work includes My Son's Story (1990), Jump (1991), and None to Accompany Me (1994). She has received many awards, including the Booker Prize (for The Conservationist, in 1974) and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.