I think that parts of it are true, and that it is part of the truth. I know that it owes a profound debt to Jeff Peires and Noel Mostert, and to my father, James Whyle, on whose letters the story that he tells Rharhabe is based. I know that that there are tunes stolen from Dylan Thomas and Rian Malan, and Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller and Ken Kesey and Norman Mailer and other authors whom I admire just this side of idolatry. I know that names and facts have been changed. I hope that they have been changed enough. May this book make no one’s life worse.

South Africa is an extraordinary miracle. A dangerous and beautiful country with lovely laws and a history that has created horrific poverty and a citizenry with no taste for obeying those laws. In so far as we are successful it is, I believe, because of people who work, who are honest, productive. People who grow two blades of grass where only one grew before; people who know that all humans are equal. People who are willing to forgive, but unwilling to forget where we come from.

I started out thinking that I would write a book which was true. I don’t know what that word means any more. Truth is like matter itself. The closer you look the more it disappears, until you are confronted with spinning particles, tiny speeding entities that are changed by the mere act of examination. Stories, losing their brief purchase in the present, change in the telling and the best one can hope for is that they illuminate a little and that they entertain.