None to Accompany Me, Nadine Gordimer's eleventh novel, takes place in a tumultuous South Africa in the final throws of apartheid, in the year when the old life comes to an end. The upheaval is reflected in the life of Vera Stark, a white civil rights lawyer who gradually sheds the trappings of her married life in pursuit of a small space in existence...to be traversed by herself: herself a final form of company discovered. Tracing Vera's transition along with her country's, None to Accompany Me is a lyrical exploration of radical social change as a possibility of changing oneself. 

Both pragmatist and sensualist, wife and mother, lover and political activist, Vera is one of Gordimer's most complex and intriguing creations. The novel's secondary characters more than hold their own, though: Vera's handsome husband Bennet, a would-be sculptor now reduced by the desire to provide for her to selling so-called prestige luggage; their children Ivan, a London banker, and Annie, a gay South African doctor; Didymus and his wife Sibongile (Sally), black revolutionaries returned from exile abroad to find their public roles reversed: Didymus sidelined and Sibongile on a hit-list of high-profile politicians; their lovely daughter Mpho, half-Zulu, half-Xhosa, and all-London teenager; Vera's co-worker Oupa, former prisoner on Robber Island, bursting with hopes and plans for South Africa; and Zeph Rapulana, one of the new black men with the skills and personal power to help bring those hopes and dreams to fruition. 

This new South Africa is not romanticized: there are deaths by violence, desperate housing shortages, hints of corruption, political rivalries. Asked byNewsweek what readers should learn from None to Accompany Me, Gordimer replied, "I hope they will take away a sense of the true realities of South Africa, of the wonderful achievements of freedom in [a] few short months, and also understand that there are enormous tasks for people to tackle, and that we need help."