The Eyes of the Naked

Book excerpt: Amid the chaos, he’d fled on foot from the crime scene. He ran under the cover of night, his escape aided by a series of broken street lamps. He’d come away with nothing save the clothes on his back – and now his son. After becoming embroiled in a robbery, Nakedi Solomon flees to Mthatha, taking his boy with him – without his ex-wife’s knowledge. But the Eastern Cape offers no refuge: his young brother has run away from home, possibly to a suspicious circumcision school. Drawn into the hunt for his sibling while he evades the law, Nakedi will smash into his history, and the norms of society and culture, to ask: What does it mean to be a man? To be a father? On this unexpected journey, a new consciousness awakens inside him.