Set in a beautifully rendered 1990s Cape Town, Zo‰ Wicomb's celebrated novel rev
olves around Marion Campbell, who runs a travel agency but hates traveling, and
who, in post-apartheid society, must negotiate the complexities of a knotty rela
tionship with Brenda, her first black employee. As Alison McCulloch noted in the
New York Times, "Wicomb deftly explores the ghastly soup of racism in all its u
nglorydenial, tradition, habit, stupidity, fearand manages to do so without mora
lizing or becoming formulaic."
