When Michiel Steyn returns to the family farmstead in South Africa for his mother's funeral, he has spent close to half his lifetime abroad. But even after 15 years' absence, neither Michiel nor those left behind have truly come to terms with his terrible flight from the farm they called Paradise.
This remarkable novel evokes the twilight of South Africa's apartheid society in the early 1970s as seen through the eyes of a young Afrikaner boy, Marnus Erasmus. From the story of a seemingly stable and affluent family, whose self-delusion and arrogance masks a troubling undercurrent, comes a harrowing parallel tale of a childhood corrupted and a society beginning to crumble.