Using anecdotes, poems, dialogue, and fragments of historical research, Call it a Difficult Night follows a nonlinear path in tracing the life of its young narrator/protagonist. Institutionalised after a 'final break', a young woman remembers in sharp detail her disturbing childhood visions, which have become overwhelming by the time she is at a boarding school in the US and later at university in South Africa. When she finally gets a diagnosis - temporal lobe epilepsy - a doctor explains that she is likely to be either demented or brain dead by the time she's 30. Set mainly during the short...