On the other hand, when I was at school, I remember kids in my class boasting about the members of their family who had 'turned white'. - Zoë Wicomb

After several false starts, self-reflexivity offered a solution –– I decided to exploit my inability to write, to fictionalise the writer herself, and to make the actual writing of Pringle’s history the framework of the novel.

The character Mary Prince was an obvious choice because her slave narrative was the first by a woman. It was published in London by Pringle in spite of opposition and litigation by British people who benefitted from slavery. He was also reviled by fellow Scottish settlers at the Cape, who persisted with the myth that slavery in South Africa was an altogether more benign affair.

I was hot-headed, impatient, I just wanted to leave the whole oppressiveness of my own culture far behind.