'The story, as disturbing as it is enthralling, of a girl's struggle to emerge from under the dead weight of her father's oppression while at the same time searching for a secure footing in the moral chaos of South Africa of the apartheid era.' JM Coetzee 'Readable, tangible and haunting.' Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth 'A beautiful evocation of childhood. Like colours slowly blooming downstream.' Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers

Elleke Boehmer is the author of Screens against the Sky (short-listed David Hyam Prize, 1990), Bloodlines (shortlisted SANLAM prize), and Nile Baby (2008), and also the short-story collection Sharmilla and Other Portraits (2010). Her edition of Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys was a 2004 summer bestseller. Her acclaimed biography of Nelson Mandela (2008) has been translated into Arabic, Malaysian, Thai, Kurdish, Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. She has published several other books including Stories of Women (2005), the anthology Empire Writing (1998), and Indian Arrivals: Networks of British Empire (2015). She is a judge of the Man Booker International Prize 2015.