Thoba
“The Test” is a story about two boys who test themselves against each other and nature through a contest of endurance against cold and rain. Thoba is a young boy in a black township who enjoys a slightly higher economic status than his friends and thus the endurance test is also infused with social and political dimensions.
The Sick Woman's Son
Another young boy is at the center of “The Prophetess.” The title character has been endowed with a mythic power that takes her from mere spiritual figure to a level of superstition among the townspeople. The boy is sent by his sick mother to retrieve holy water from the woman, but the bottle breaks and the water is spilled on the way home. His decision to refill it with regular water which seems to miraculously heal his oblivious mother brings into question his entire worldview.
Uncle Lovington
The title character of “Uncle” is a charismatic, worldly trumpet-player who is long absent from the lives of his sister and nephew. All these aspects together serve to make him a kind of larger-than-life heroic father-figure to another young boy. While pursuing a track to provide the boy with necessary insight into morality and values, he also instills in him an understanding of his culture from a more racially pure non-Eurocentric perspective. A showdown with the height to which the boy has situated the uncle is inevitable, however.
Vukani
Yet another young boy is at the center of the story “The Music of the Violin.” This is also another story of a musician, but one quite unlike Uncle Lovington. Vukani shares no love of the violin; it will never become to him what the trump is to the Uncle. He is being forced to learn the instrument solely for purposes of his parents’ ambitions to become upwardly mobile. Like the inevitability of Uncle Lovington being knocked down a notch, the story quickly assumes a pace moving inexorably toward Vukani’s rebellion against his parents which for them comes at one of the worst possible moments.
Zamani and Zani
“Fools” is the last and the longest story in the collection and the only which does not revolve around a young boy in some fashion. Zamani is a disgraced schoolteacher whose offenses range from theft to rape. Zani is the brother of the young student he victimized. Unlike the previous two stories, the direction of the narrative never assumes a predictable trek; if anything, it is utterly unpredictable as issues of politics, racial identification and opposition philosophies toward living collude to twist whatever one might expect will happen into an ending that few will have foreseen.
