What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else.

After Abdu's visa is refused the couple returns to his homeland where Nadine Gordimer is the alien. Literary recognition for her accomplishments culminated with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991 which noted that Gordimer "through her magnificent epic writing has—in the words of Alfred Nobel—been of very great benefit to humanity". She refused to let her work be aired by the South African Broadcasting Corporation because it was controlled by the apartheid government.

She has recently been active in HIV/AIDS causes. Gordimer's writing has long dealt with moral and racial issues particularly apartheid in South Africa.