You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town is among the only works of fiction to explore the experience of "Coloured" citizens in apartheid-era South Africa, whose mixed heritage traps them, as Bharati Mukherjee wrote in the New York Times, "in the racial crucible of their country." Frieda Shenton, the daughter of Coloured parents in rural South Africa, is taught as a child to emulate whites: she is encouraged to learn correct English, to straighten her hair, and to do more than, as her father says, "peg out the madam's washing."

While still a self-conscious and overweight adolescent, Frieda...

The author uses biographical accounts to reconstruct the lives of enslaved women.