In the Fog of the Seasons' End reminds us that South Africa is not merely an 'issue', some abstract fixture to arrange in the liberal conscience; it is a complicated country full of living people and able to retain the love of those who suffer in it. The novel tells us chiefly about three men, two Coloured, one African, who work in a political organisation which, years after bans and arrests have driven all radical opposition underground, still distributes revolutionary leaflets and ferries volunteers out to train as guerrillas. The elegiac title is not misplaced….

No one is especially brave or particularly clever. Even the dedicated Beukes is essentially an average sensual man, always carrying with him the pyjamas, symbol of banal decency, wished upon him by the wife he yearns and fears for. Yet when every action is measured against the viciousness of police and the omnipresence of spies, even friendship becomes appallingly heroic.

The book is written with an exile's loving care for remembered life, for effects of summer light, for snatches of talk in the streets, for urban landscapes mouldy yet familiar. But as detail after detail builds up a very vivid background, simile after simile suggests the ceaseless violence of apartheid. There are passages where anger boils beyond the control of style, but these make the book's general restraint more impressive. Its imagery builds up a picture of man almost, but not quite, destroyed by himself….

There is, Mr La Guma thus convinces us, an incorruptible residue of human nature, scarred, pissed-on, battered, which has to fight, and will fight, to preserve itself, its heart's affections, those little decencies so despised by self-styled 'revolutionaries' who have always been free to take them for granted.

This book unequivocally sides with hurt people against the race-based class which hurts them. It is propaganda, and so it should be. But it is humane, careful and very moving; it is propaganda for the truth, a work of art.