
For one long intense week in October 1962 it looked like the world might end as the Cuban Missile Crisis brought with it an East-West st&-off & the possibility of nuclear holocaust This dark bittersweet novel evokes the fear & confusion of the period through the experience of a young boy caught up in South Africa's political unrest following the Sharpeville massacre Nelson Mandela's arrest & the State of Emergency Paul sensitive isolated & desperate to fit in despite his English parents has the chance to join the most popular pupil's gang & will do whatever is required to please its Afrikaans' ringleader When a friend of Paul's parents is put under house-arrest the boys become suddenly aware of a world beyond the school boundaries the far-right is in the ascendant & South Africa is no longer safe Added to this sense of unease Paul's growing realisation of his sexuality sets him still further apart from his peers Now a man in his sixties & living abroad he is drawn back to Pretoria to revisit his boyhood home & make sense of the part he unwittingly played in the arrest of a charismatic teacher & his African lover