On a farm near the Cape Colony in the early nineteenth century, a slave rebellion kills three and leaves eleven others condemned to death. The rebellion's leader, Galant, was raised alongside the boys who would become his masters. His first victim, Nicholas van der Merwe, might have been his brother.
As the many layers of Andre Brink's novel unfold, it becomes clear that the violent uprising is as much a culmination of family tensions as it is an outcry against the oppression of slavery.
André Brink is one of South Africa's most eminent novelists. He is the author of seventeen works of fiction, has been twice shortlisted for the Booker prize and is an outspoken recorder of South Africa's turbulent history from the days of apartheid to the present.