Steve and jabulile, once clandestine lovers under a racist law forbidding sexual relations between black and white, are living in a newly free South Africa. Both were combatents in the struggle agianst apartheid, and now he, a university lecturer, and she, a lawyer, are parents of children born in freedom. But as the ideas of this "better life for all"are challenged by the realities of the world around them, Steve and Jabulile consider leaving the country they so vehemently fought for free. The subjetct is contemporary, but Nadeine Gordimer's treatment is, as ever, timeless. In the telling of this conflicted cople's story, she captures the fragmented essence of a nation.
