When Michiel Steyn returns to the family farmstead in South Africa for his mother's funeral, he has spent close to half his lifetime abroad. But even after fifteen years' absence, neither Michiel nor those he left behind have truly come to terms with his terrible flight from the farm they called Paradise.

As Michiel submits himself to the rituals of mourning and remembrance in the small town and on the land where he became a man, all that has lain undisturbed for years is brought to light. A father's implacable fury and a brother's violent death, the loss of a child, the betrayal of love and the ugly memory of the dying days of apartheid all come between the prodigal and forgiveness. Michiel finds that he must confront not only his grief for his mother's passing but the painful truth of his own transgressions. Elegiac and chilling, poignant and profoundly thoughtful, Kings of the Water is at once a lament both personal and political, and a meditation on the potency of reconciliation.