Evie walks with her father at night in the secret moss garden; the Warlock sisters play games with the jagged metal in the scrap yard; the adulteress drags a boulder up a hill in penance, watched by the Brethren and their strangely scarred congregation... such are the denizens of these intense, lush stories of good and evil, purity and contamination, desire and religion. "A collection of some of the most exquisite short stories I have read in a long time. Each story has been finely carved, with every little detail in place, creating such a dense system of interrelated meanings that the reader cannot skip a line without missing something vital.. I can honestly say that I have seldom, in South African literature, come across short stories of such suggestive power as these." - André Brink.