The voluptuous delights of peanut butter and jam

Nyree and Cia O'Callohan live on a remote farm in the east of Rhodesia in the late 1970s. Beneath the dripping vines of the Vumba rainforest, and under the tutelage of their heretical grandfather, theirs is a seductive childhood laced with African paganism, magled Catholicism and the lore of the Brothers Grimm. Their world extends as far as the big fence, erected to keep out the "Terrs". The two girls know little beyond that until the arrival of "the bastard", their orphaned cousin Ronin, who is to poison their idyll forever. Set against the backdrop of civil war and death throes of a colony, Lauren Liebenberg's delightful and dark novel about growing up in Africa is a stunning debut.