Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black, by Nadine Gordimer

In January 2005, Nadine Gordimer composed obituaries for two friends, Anthony Sampson and Susan Sontag, who died within ten days of each other. Her writing was uncharacteristically stiff, almost numb, as if she’d been forced to comment before she was ready. In “Dreaming of the Dead,” one of the finest stories in her new collection, “Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black,” Gordimer imagines a more fitting remembrance for her intellectual peers.’ Read the review at Bookforum.