Mary Benson (campaigner) Mary Benson (campaigner) Mary Benson (8 December 1919 – 19 June 2000) was a South African civil rights campaigner and author. Born in 1919 in Pretoria, Benson served in the South African Women's Army during World War II. After the war, she was secretary to film director David Lean. Benson became acquainted with the author Alan Paton, and read his novel "Cry, the beloved country" (1948), whose main theme was racial discrimination in South Africa. This affected her greatly, and she became a campaigner for the rights of black people there. She worked with Michael Scott (who, in 1946, was
The Late Bourgeois World novel "manages to register a good many symptomatic ideas and subtle feelings which lose nothing in transition to the page; they remain instantaneous and sharp." The Late Bourgeois World The Late Bourgeois World is a 1966 novella by Nadine Gordimer. The novel follows an egocentric white woman, as she negotiates a failing marriage, "half-hearted' love affairs and political intrigue. The novel was banned by the Censorship board in South Africa. "The New York Times" described the novel as the most "overtly political" of Gordimer's novels comparing it to "Cry, The Beloved Country" in its potential for shocking those outside of