We Are Not Such Things

When she moved from the U.S. to South Africa, Van Der Leun became obsessed with the story of Amy Biehl, a young white American women whose death at the hands of a black mob in the last days of apartheid, nearly twenty years before, became a potent symbol of reconciliation after Biehl's family forgave her killers. Everything began to unravel as Van Der Leun pulled on the threads of this closed case, but as in so many mysteries, the question of who really done it became almost an afterthought next to the complex, tragic reality her investigations unearthed. She is a dogged guide—blunt, compassionate, often naive—to the glitzy enclaves, dustily grim suburbs, and, especially, the aggrieved townships of this still-divided, "impossible" country.