A collection of short stories capturing the friction between south and north, ambition and tradition and light and dark. The characters struggle to find contentment with themselves, their own pasts and each other.

Elleke Boehmer is the author of five novels including Screens against the Sky (shortlisted for the David Higham Prize), Bloodlines (shortlisted for the Sanlam Prize), Nile Baby, and The Shouting in the Dark (longlisted for the Sunday Times prize). Born in South Africa, she lives in Oxford where she is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford.
Her edition of Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys was a bestseller, and her acclaimed biography of Nelson Mandela has been translated into several languages. She has published several other books including Stories of Women, the anthology Empire Writing, Postcolonial Poetics, and Indian Arrivals: Networks of British Empire which won the ESSE 2015-16 Prize. She wrote the OUP very Short Introduction to Nelson Mandela.