Author Description

"As a fiery up-and-coming lawyer at the Bana-Bantie Children's Agency in Mochudi, Botswana, Naledi Chaba's caselaod is bulging with stories of rape and abuse. So when she takes on the case of a 15-year-old girl who has been raped by the lodger, she's on a familiar battleground, involving her own peers. And it's not only J.J., her silk-shirt-wearing, cigar-smoking legal opponent, who's happy to avoid taking moral responsibility. Justice Mmung, the High Court Judge hearing the case, has secrets in his past. It's yet another example of hypocrisy in high places, and she's tired of it. Naledi is giving the Junior Bar address at the Law Society Annual Dinner: is this the place to publicly expose him? But digging into the past holds surprises. their generation was shaped by the Botswana of no tar roads, cattle posts, and customary law... and what will she find at the end of a three-hour trip down dusty dirt roads into the desert? Unity Dow's latest novel is a fascinating and uncompromising exposé of the ways in which the law can fail the weakest. Yet it's also a witty homage to the everyday texture of life in Botswana, permeated by the smell of bogobe and tripe, home-cooked in a three-legged pot by a loving father."--Cover.