When Ingi Friedlander travels to Yearsonend in the dry interior of South Africa to purchase a statue, its eccentric sculptor. Jonty Jack, does not want to sell - he says it was not his creation, but appeared one morning as though it had miraculously risen from the ground. As Ingi decides to stay and try to win Jonty's trust, she becomes involved in other quests, as she soon realises that Yearsonend is not just a hot, sleepy town, but a world in which stories of love, revenge and greed whirl like dust devils and the past is ever-present. Gradually she realises that the townspeople suspect she has come to seek a different treasure - the legendary wagon of gold brought in by defeated Boer soldiers. But where is it buried? What of the other more macabre cargo that the wagon carried? And what dark secret of the past does deaf and dumb Italian POW, Mario Salviati, have to hide?

A major work of South African literature which taps into the lifeblood of a complicated, tumultuous and magical country. The author is a professor at the University of Cape Town.