This book, his second published novel, made a huge impact on me as a young man living in this South Africa where questions of morality, sexuality, youth, drugs and even sanity are in constant tension. All these questions are asked and some are answered in this novel in a shocking and sometimes obscene fashion.
One can't help getting the feeling that Duiker drew a lot from his own life experience in writing this book. From this, one can deduce that Duiker was a very troubled man and, yet, very gifted. He ended his own life sometime after getting this novel published.
This book is about, amongst others, Tshepo - who later becomes known as Angelo. All is not well with Tshepo.
He witnessed his mother getting murdered in front of him when he was a child, in his later years (early 20's) he's institutionalised as a result of "cannabis-induced psychosis", he gets raped by a man he'd unknowingly began to fall in love with and he has an estranged relationship with his father who he blames for his mother's death.
There are a number of characters who's lives overlap with Tshepo's - Mmabatho, his best friend; the ultra feminine Sebastian; Zebulon, the psychotic murderer amongst others - and their stories are eloquently told in the first person.
As an aspiring writer, I cannot imagine what kind of life experiences Duiker had to have had in order to write such a powerful story - it makes anything that I can possibly conjur out to be somewhat insignificant.
