This book began after a terrorist attack in South Africa. Describing what happened was to be a catharsis—a way of dealing with a post traumatic stress syndrome. Writing about the event successfully assuaged its dramatic impact, and then, with the encouragement of my family and friends, the initial writing grew into something that hopefully will make a greater contribution beyond my recovery.

Discrimination based on colour or race still exists in our world. There has been enormous progress over the last fifty years to rid ourselves of the abhorrence that in its active form is segregation. Looking back at the past, albeit in the somewhat fictionalised form utilised in this novel, will hopefully allow the grotesque image of man’s inhumanity to man and woman, that was and is racial segregation, to remain committed to history.

Although this book is fictional, it draws on some real political and historical events from the author’s own experience while doing a PhD centred on politics and race in South Africa. If it allows the reader therefore to experience the mephitic feeling of segregation, and as a result produces such a noisome aftertaste, sufficient to cause one person to resile from discrimination anywhere, there will be no greater success.