Get a Life

When Paul Bannerman, an ecologist in Africa, is diagnosed with cancer and prescribed treatment that makes him radioactive, his suddenly fragile existence makes him question his life for the first time. He is especially struck by the contradiction in values of his work as a conservationist and that of his wife, an advertising agency executive. Then when Paul moves in with his parents to protect his wife and young son from radiation, the strange nature of his condition leads his mother to face her own past.

Review: 'Absorbing and impressive ... a beautifully written meditation on marriage and solitude' Daily Mail 'Get a Life is about all of our fears: of destruction, but also of contamination, alienation and enforced solitude ... A brave story about the fragility and the dangers of intimacy' Daily Telegraph 'Gordimer has undoubtedly become one of the World's Great Writers ... her rootedness in a political time, place and faith has never dimmed her complex gifts as an artist' Independent 'Gordimer's stark sentences and emotional depth make most modern fiction seem trivial' The Times