Emergency Continued takes as its starting point the tense relationship between older and younger generations of South African blacks in their decades long struggle against racism. A father's search for his runaway son carries the older man on a journey through the confusion and violence that marked the closing years of apartheid.

Richard Rive is one of South Africa's most important black writers, giving a nuanced and humane view of family tensions in the face of oppression. Tragically his homophobic murder just after he completed this work meant that he did not live to see his country recover from racial strife to take its place as today's Rainbow Nation.

From The New York Times Book Review:

"The events Andrew is involved in during his search for his son illuminate what turned out to be the final onslaught that caused white power - in its own self-interest - to abandon the trappings of apartheid. ... Richard Rive gives us an unusual glimpse of the dissension behind the barricades of the anti-apartheid movement. Andrew's detestation of the coerciveness of the activists makes him a traitor in the view of some of his colleagues and students.... The resolution [at the end] seems an act of faith denying despair. This is apt, perhaps, given the uncertainty that lies ahead in the rebuilding of a South Africa freed from apartheid that Rive tragically did not live to witness."