The story hinges on the rape of a young white woman by an African and how her life in white society crumbles as she gives birth to his child. The young man avoids arrest but is unable to shake off the implications of the rape - a desperate gesture against the indignities imposed on him by apartheid - as fate draws him back to the victim of his crime. Arthur Maimane has written a hard-edged account of the harsh reality of life in Johannesburg's Black Townships in the fifties, expressed in the colourful macho vernacular of the day. He draws on his own experiences as a young journalist in describing township life and the drift of Black intellectuals into White liberal society.