Beethoven was One-Sixteenth Black is a book of short stories by South African writer Nadine Gordimer, published by Bloomsbury.

Reviewing the collection in The New York Times, Siddhartha Deb wrote, "As she always has, Gordimer offers her readers a rare combination of intimacy and transcendence".

[4] Jonathan Gibbs wrote in The Independent: In her 84th year, Nadine Gordimer has produced a remarkable 10th collection.

They show none of the 'audacity' Richard Ford called for in his recent anthology of American short stories.

Instead, what they show is tact: a quality that seems bound up in Gordimer's decades of experience.