Nadine Gordimer's Booker Prize-winning novel, the Conservationist: Booker Prize Winner 1974, is a powerful take on the apartheid regime that dominated South African life for most of the time she was there. She draws from her own personal experience to weave together this testament to what she feels is one of humanity's greatest failures. Published by Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd in 2005, the reissue edition of this novel is available as a paperback. It remains one of the most hard-hitting takes on apartheid.The Conservationist: Booker Prize Winner 1974 follows the life and times of protagonist Mehring, a rich, white businessman, who, despite his excesses and wealth, is dissatisfied with his life. He is divorced and his son is a liberal homosexual who disapproves of his father's conservative ways. His midlife crisis leads him to procure a farm, run by black slaves and his call to redeem himself springs from the corpse of an unidentified black man that is found on his estate. The presence of this dead man causes him to question his own assumptions, drawing parallels between the two lives. Key Features: The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer was the joint winner of the Booker-McConnell Prize for fiction in 1974.
