In this collection of new stories, Nadine Gordimer crosses the frontiers of politics, memory, sexuality, and love with the fearless insight that is the hallmark of her writing. A middle-aged, anti-apartheid academic embarks on a search for his own racial identity, a loving friend dreams of a lunch in which Susan Sontag and Edward Said appear, and a parrot who scandalously confronts his listeners with the reproduction of eavesdropped quarrels and clandestine love-talk.