It could be stated that Nadine Gordimer expressed her opposition to the South African apartheid in her short story "Once Upon a Time". it seems that it is structured as a fairy tale, it shows a "detrimental effect of the apartheid" on people at the top of the social /power structure.
Gordimer´s political beliefs are reflected in this story in a way that she puts her view with the device os negatie dialects. For example: “art is the negative knowledge of the actual world” (“Reconciliation Under Duress” ). Rather, art explores what is not known and as Adorno explains, “art does not become knowledge with reference to mere immediate reality” . Throughout her novels, Gordimer avoids references to the “immediate reality.” As Ettin explains, we never get a full picture of the plot and instead the reader must orient himself by considering what has not been said. As Gordimer draws on the theories of Adorno, she portrays the strong appeal of this German, Jewish theorist, further distancing herself from the genre of black authors and redefining the objective of a political novel.
