Juggling with our perception of time and reality, Still Life tells the story of an author struggling to write a biography of Scottish poet and abolitionist Thomas Pringle. In her efforts to resurrect Pringle, the writer summons the spectre of Mary Prince, the West Indian slave whose History Pringle published, along with Hinza, his adopted black South African son.

As these voices vie for control over the text and the lines between life writing and fiction-making begin to blur, yet another voice enters the chorus: Sir Nicholas Greene, the self-regarding poet from Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando. Their adventures through time and space, from Victorian South Africa and London to the author's desk in Glasgow in the present day, offer a poignant yet often playful exploration of colonial history and racial oppression