Bieber guides us into one of the toughest neighbourhoods of Johannesburg, a world of youth gangs and their codes of behaviour, where children live with AIDS and prostitutes change their rates according to their clients’ colour. We meet David, nineteen years lived on the margins of the law in the coloured suburb of Fietas, but also young people trying to become dancers and musicians, or a father and son improvising as trapeze artists: anything to give body to their dream of escaping reality. The book speaks of loss of innocence and survival instinct, metaphors for understanding South Africa’s struggle to find its own difficult identity.