Ben Voss

It's South Africa 1990. Two major events are about to happen: The release of Nelson Mandela and, more importantly, it's Spud Milton's first year at an elite boys only private boarding school. Spud is a boy from an ordinary background who wins a scholarship to a private school in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. Surrounded by boys with nicknames like Gecko, Rambo, Rain Man and Mad Dog, Spud has his hands full trying to adapt to his new home.

As Spud Milton continues his awkward stagger through adolescence, he learns one of life's most important lessons: When dealing with women and cretins, nothing is ever quite as it seems. "I'm practically a man in most areas," writes Spud confidently on his sixteenth birthday. The year is 1992 and, in South Africa, radical change is in the air. The country may be on the bumpy road to an uncertain future, but Spud Milton is hoping for a smooth ride as he returns to boarding school as a senior. Instead, he discovers that his vindictive arch enemy is back to taunt him and that a garrulous Malawian has taken residence in his dormitory, along with the regular inmates and misfits he calls friends. Spud's world has never seemed less certain; he attempts to master Shakespeare, wrestles constantly with his God, and the power of negative thinking, and develops an aversion to fried fish after a shocking discovery about his grandmother, Wombat.

In 1994 South Africa, the daughter of a multiracial couple is kidnapped. She escapes and as an adult becomes a detective. Continuing to deal with her past trauma, Reyka Gama uses her skills to raise her child and solve mysteries that have challenged others.

The Greyling siblings reunite at their family home in the Namaqualand desert in the Northern Cape after one of them reneges on a decade-long deal to settle the debts they took on when their father abandoned them and disappeared.