Reading Order
The House Gun Reading Order
The House Gun (1998) by Nadine Gordimer is a late-career masterpiece from the Nobel Laureate (she won in 1991) — a domestic and legal thriller set in post-apartheid South Africa, following Harald and Claudia Lindgard, a middle-class white couple, after their son Duncan murders a friend and neighbor in a rage fueled by a sexual triangle. The gun of the title is a 'house gun' — a weapon kept for household protection, so common in South Africa's culture of domestic gun ownership that it has its own category — and the novel uses the gun and the murder to examine the violence that permeates South African society at every level: the political violence of the apartheid era, the criminal violence of the transition period, the sexual violence of the triangle that produced the murder, and the quiet domestic violence of a family that has never really communicated. Gordimer's great achievement in The House Gun is the use of the criminal trial — Duncan's murder charge, his defense by Hamilton Motsamai, a brilliant young Black lawyer — to examine the post-apartheid social contract. Harald and Claudia are liberals, but their liberalism has been theoretical: they supported the ANC but from a distance, and now they must place their son's life in the hands of a Black lawyer, must sit in a courtroom in democratic South Africa and trust a system they never fully engaged with. The novel asks what post-apartheid South Africa actually means for white South Africans who supported the transition but never had to live inside it. Gordimer's answer is characteristically uncomfortable: it means, among other things, learning to trust what you claimed to believe in.
Where to start
The House Gun — any edition. The novel is tightly structured and can be read in a day or two; Gordimer's late style is more compressed and less politically expository than her earlier work.
Complete The House Gun Book List
- 1Buy
The House Gun
Nadine Gordimer·1998·The novel — the Lindgards' son accused of murder, the post-apartheid courtroom, and the question of what liberal white South Africa actually believes. - 2Buy
Burger's Daughter
Nadine Gordimer·1979·Gordimer's most celebrated novel — Rosa Burger, daughter of a communist activist, navigating her inheritance of political commitment; the essential companion in Gordimer's body of work. - 3Buy
July's People
Nadine Gordimer·1981·Gordimer's novel of a white family in revolutionary crisis — the companion to The House Gun in its examination of what white South Africans actually believe when the social order changes. - 4Buy
Disgrace
J.M. Coetzee·1999·Coetzee's post-apartheid novel — published the year after The House Gun; the South African crime that exposes the liberal fiction, from the other major South African literary voice. - 5Buy
None to Accompany Me
Nadine Gordimer·1994·Gordimer's earlier post-apartheid novel — Vera Stark in the transition period; the novel that preceded The House Gun in Gordimer's examination of what the transition means for white South Africans. - 6Buy
Cry, the Beloved Country
Alan Paton·1948·Paton's foundational South African novel — the moral geography within which Gordimer and Coetzee both work; the liberal tradition that The House Gun is continuing and testing. - 7Buy
A Dry White Season
André Brink·1979·Brink's anti-apartheid novel — an Afrikaner schoolteacher investigating torture; the liberal Afrikaner tradition that complements Gordimer's liberal English South African tradition. - 8Buy
Age of Iron
J.M. Coetzee·1990·Coetzee's apartheid-era novel — an elderly Cape Town woman's moral confrontation with the violence of the state she has benefited from; the philosophical companion to The House Gun's social examination.
The House Gun — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The House Gun about?
The House Gun follows Harald and Claudia Lindgard, a middle-class white couple in post-apartheid South Africa. Harald works in insurance; Claudia is a doctor. They receive a phone call telling them their son Duncan has shot and killed Natalie's partner Carl, a man who was one of the communal household's residents and whom Duncan found in bed with his lover Natalie. The murder weapon is the 'house gun' — a weapon kept by the communal household for protection, as many South African households do. Duncan turns himself in to the police. The novel follows Harald and Claudia as they engage Hamilton Motsamai, a brilliant and celebrated Black lawyer, to defend Duncan, and as they sit through the trial, confronting their son's guilt, their own failures as parents, and the question of what justice and punishment mean in post-apartheid South Africa.
What is the significance of the 'house gun' in the novel?
The house gun — a weapon kept for domestic protection — is Gordimer's central symbol for the violence that permeates South African society. In a society with one of the world's highest rates of gun ownership (driven by a combination of apartheid-era violence, post-apartheid crime rates, and a culture of self-protection that both causes and responds to that crime), the house gun is ubiquitous. Duncan's crime is made possible by the gun's presence; the ease with which a moment of rage becomes a murder is the house gun's doing. But Gordimer extends the symbol: the apartheid state was also a kind of house gun, a weapon of protection that produced the violence it was supposed to prevent. The novel asks whether post-apartheid South Africa can put the house gun away — whether it can build a different kind of security that doesn't depend on the weapon that causes the wound.
How does The House Gun examine white liberal South Africa?
Harald and Claudia are good liberals — they supported the ANC, they opposed apartheid, they believe in the new South Africa. But their liberalism has been theoretical: they have lived in their middle-class suburb, sent their son to the right schools, and engaged with Black South Africans as abstractions rather than individuals. The novel's central irony is that their crisis — their son's murder charge — forces them to engage with post-apartheid South Africa at the most intimate level. They must trust a Black lawyer with their son's life. They must sit in a democratic courtroom and accept its judgments. They must learn to trust the system they supported but never inhabited. Gordimer uses the trial to dramatize the difference between liberal sympathy (which costs nothing) and liberal faith (which costs everything). The Lindgards discover that they have the former but must develop the latter.
How does Gordimer's late style differ from her earlier work?
The House Gun belongs to Gordimer's late period, and the prose is notably more compressed and less expository than her earlier, more overtly political novels like Burger's Daughter (1979) and July's People (1981). The anti-apartheid urgency of her middle period required extensive contextual explanation for international readers; post-apartheid, Gordimer can assume a different kind of reader and a different relationship to context. The late style is more elliptical, more dependent on what is left unsaid, and more interested in the interior lives of characters who are not obviously political. The House Gun is, formally, a domestic thriller as much as a political novel, and Gordimer uses the genre's conventions (suspense, revelation, the courtroom climax) while working against their usual ideological implications.
What should I read after The House Gun?
After The House Gun, Gordimer's Burger's Daughter (1979) and July's People (1981) are her most celebrated works. None to Accompany Me (1994) precedes The House Gun in her post-apartheid fiction; The Pickup (2001) follows it. For the tradition she belongs to, Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country and J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace are the essential companions. For scholarly work on Gordimer, Dominic Head's Nadine Gordimer (1994) and Susan Gardner's more recent biographical work are the most important critical resources.
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