These twenty chapters are stories generated during about years of Felix Greenspan's 'white life'. He is Johannesburg-born, Jewish, spastic. His father provides, his mother protects, but life, of course, impinges with a full share of claims and contingencies. From the first, there are glimmerings of Africa's otherness, promise and menace. Then, to get his schooling, Felix is sent to an institution where Jews are rare, so he gets an inkling of his own otherness. Later, it's the body's susceptibilities that get at him - desire, lust, illness, bereavement, all complicated by his literary aspirations and uncertainties regarding authenticity and love. At university and beyond he tangles with distortions of reality that spring from his own or others' politics, religion, depression. The public rage erupting in Soweto in 1976 sends a passing ripple of perilous kindness through is private life. Soon thereafter, his half-hearted venture into literary politics ends on a souring note of fiasco; two perplexing love affairs leave him disappointed and angry; and major spinal surgery takes him to the verge of death. Still convalescent, he is visited by a stranger, Edith, whose astonishing certitude in love brings him a renewal of life, full and serene.