Contemporary South Africa is the concern of international bestseller, Etienne van Heerden. As in Ancestral Voices, his hugely successful first novel which was translated into thirteen languages, his setting is the Eastern Cape, its people, language and landscape. 

These thirteen tales encompass a variety of worlds, from remote farm to sophisticated city advertising agency, from township violence to military camp, from university campus to school playground. A soldier tethers a Cuban prisoner like a dog, a bishop is caught up in township violence, a boy crawls into Olive Schreiner's stone sarcophagus, a young copywriter finds himself with a hired prostitute. All are characters preoccupied with the past, dreaming of the furniture, and seemingly incapable of breaking free from the violence that was, and still largely is, South Africa.

Like Ancestral Voices, this collection of stories has been translated into several languages, confirming Etienne van Heerden as one of the finest of today's South African writers. 

Format: Paperback
Year published: 1995
Pages: 183
Sub-genre: Short stories.
Imprint: Allison & Busby