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...

A richly detailed portrait not only of a man struggling to lead an ethical life but of the disturbed times in which he lived. Drawing on family papers, wide-ranging interviews, FBI files, American and German newspapers, a wide array of published sources, and her own memories, the author traces Marks's German American heritage, his education both formal and informal, his marriage to a fellow Communist from a poor Russian family, his rocky start as an academic, his anguish when confronted by his Communist past, and his ultimate creation of a satisfying career. Her sleuthing encompasses as well...