The Ultimate Safari by Nadine Gordimer: Summary, Themes and Questions
Quick answer: The Ultimate Safari by Nadine Gordimer: full summary with the refugee camp ending, the child narrator and her grandmother, themes of war and displacement, exam questions.
A girl whose mother went to the shop and never came back walks with her grandparents and little brother through the Kruger Park, hiding from the animals and from the tourists, to reach a refugee camp in South Africa. Nadine Gordimer published The Ultimate Safari in Granta in 1989 and collected it in Jump and Other Stories (1991).
The story in brief, ending included
The narrator is a Mozambican child, perhaps ten or eleven, telling her story in plain sentences. Bandits of the civil war have emptied her village: her father went to fight and did not return, her mother went out one day and never came home, and the family has been eating whatever it can find. Her grandmother decides they must leave. With her grandfather, her small brother and other villagers, led by a man who knows the way, they set out to cross the Kruger Park, the great game reserve on the South African border, on foot and in silence.
The crossing takes days. They eat almost nothing, watch lions feed, hide from tourist vehicles, and see the grandfather grow weaker and slower until one day he wanders off and cannot be found. The grandmother waits as long as she dares and then leads the children on. They reach a camp in South Africa, a huge tent full of strangers, where the narrator goes to school and the grandmother works for a little money. A white woman comes with a film crew and asks the grandmother whether she will go home when the war ends. The grandmother says there is nothing to go back to. The girl, listening, thinks privately that she will go home one day, because her mother and grandfather may be waiting there.
Who is who
A family reduced to its smallest members.
Themes and meaning
Exam readings: war and displacement, the resilience of the very young and the very old, and the irony of a game park where animals are protected and refugees are not. The tourist advertisement in the epigraph sets up the story's central contrast between the Africa that is sold and the Africa that is fled.
The sharper observation is that Gordimer, a white South African, hands the entire story to a Black Mozambican child and gives herself only the epigraph.
The craft: what the child does not say
The turn is the loss of the grandfather, handled without drama; he is simply not there, and the family must decide how long to wait. The technique to steal is the child narrator whose plainness forces the reader to supply the emotion. Gordimer never lets the girl say she is afraid or grieving; she describes lions, hunger and the size of the tent, and the reader does the rest. The final paragraph's private hope works the same way, giving us a belief the child holds and we cannot.
For class and essays
Questions with two-line answers, then terms and one misreading.
What writers can take from this
- Begin any essay with the epigraph; it is the frame that turns a refugee narrative into a critique of how Africa is packaged.
- Cite the lions and the tourists as the two audiences the family must hide from.
- Treat the grandmother's answer to the film crew as the story's thesis.
- For writers, let a young narrator describe only what can be seen and counted; the reader will feel what is withheld.
- End with a belief your character holds and the reader cannot share; it is one of the strongest closing effects available.
Try it yourself
Write a story told by a child crossing a place designed for other people's pleasure (a resort, a stadium, a cruise ship) as a route to safety. Let the child describe only what she sees, and end with a hope she keeps to herself that the reader knows is unlikely.
Questions
What happens at the end of The Ultimate Safari?
The family reaches a refugee camp in South Africa without the grandfather, who was lost in the Kruger Park. A film crew asks the grandmother if she will go home; she says there is nothing there. The girl privately decides she will return one day to find her mother and grandfather.
What is the theme of The Ultimate Safari?
War, displacement and survival, set against the irony of a game reserve where animals are protected and refugees must hide; also the gap between the Africa sold to tourists and the one people flee.
Why does Gordimer use a child narrator?
The child's plain, factual voice removes sentimentality and forces the reader to supply the grief and fear she does not name.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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