Painter Nick Steyn moves to the City Bowl in Cape Town after separating from his partner, Isabel. A young boarder moves in with Nick and they soon become friends. But one night she does not come home, and his attempts to trace her come to nothing. A few weeks later the prosperous artist Buks Verhoef makes an offer on Nick's house. Is there a connection between these events, and if so, could Nick's former friend, Victor Schoeman, the author of the outrageous novel The Shallows, have a hand in them? A parallel narrative concerns a nameless Stellenbosch woman who is writing a monograph on the famous Olivier brothers. One day she witnesses the murder of Buks Verhoef in a coffee shop; soon thereafter a sinister man starts stalking her. Could this also be Victor Schoeman? A fantastical, absurd yet haunting novel by the award-winning novelist Ingrid Winterbach. Translated as always by Michiel Heyns.