Outcasts

Outcasts is a collection of short stories set in South Africa. The collection takes the reader on a journey through two and a half centuries of life lived on the edge of human emotions. A British settler in the middle of the 19th Century, used to violent death all around him, has to come to terms with the slaughter of his own son; a mixed twenty-first century couple relive the violent history of their country in their relationship. In-between there are the apartheid years: an interrogator of political detainees destroys a man as a matter of routine while his real concern is the planning of his birthday party; a white farmer gets married while, unknown to him, the celebrations are observed by the black mother of the child he has fathered; a teenager sets out to be a terrorist; a university student, in a burst of sexual jealousy, tells the police about a crime committed by a group of students, exposing them to the capital penalty.