The House Gun Add a review

The House Gun is a novel by the South African writer Nadine Gordimer. It was first published in South Africa in 1998.

The novel is set in Johannesburg in 1996, in the post-apartheid and focuses on the upper-middle-class white family, Harald Lindgard, his wife Claudia, and their adult son, Duncan. As the novel progresses, Duncan stands trial for murder and the family rely on a black defense lawyer. Amid the trial, homosexuality emerges as a theme as does the death penalty and its place in a democratic South Africa.

Regarding the reliance of the couple on their lawyer, literary critics have drawn comparisons to Gordimer's 1981 novel, July's People, in which an affluent white couple become dependent on their black servant who shelters them when South Africa descends into civil war.