Yet trouble came

Although there are no apparent structural links between these nine stories, they were conceived of as belonging to a particular mood or being variations of a particular theme. This theme, I suppose, is South African Disappointment. The scope of this abstract does not allow a full explain what I mean by this term, but Stephen Watson's immortal essay A Version of Melancholy expresses it beautifully; as does some of Damon Galgut's writing, Don Maclennan's poetry, Johannes Kerkorrel's music, and David Goldblatt's photography. A serviceable definition might be that feeling of anxious exhaustion one feels when dealing with a world that refuses to live up to one's best expectations of it. My aim with this collection is to give this feeling its first sustained South African fictional rendition and to show how ordinary people may endure it with their dignity still intact