Inter-racial relationships may be complicated by social attitudes and mind-sets born in colonialism, slavery, or more modern, invidious European or African racism; or they may be challenged by differing expectations of cultural norms. Drawing on theories of black American cultural criticism, African nationalism and gender analysis, the critic Pia Thielmann, analyses a range of novels from three continents, which in different ways thematise the personal, cultural and social aspects of relationships, and which in a manner of respect, are deemed to be crossing social boundaries.