Breyten Breytenbach, leading Afrikaner poet, formerly incarcerated anti-apartheid campaigner, here goes in search of lost time. He returns to South Africa from Parisian exile, and finds himself excavating both his family's history and that of his nation, through a series of contemporary sketches and haunting reminiscences which are highly coloured, strongly poetic, and often unsettling in their violence. Interspersed with Breytenbach's investigations of genealogy, landscape and folklore are glimpses of the 'New South Africa', where efforts at a formal process of Truth and Reconciliation teeter uneasily atop a legacy of terrible and enduring violence. The image of the 'boerboel' dog - the canine friend inclined to turn savage at unexpected moments - persists throughout this troubled memoir.