Peaches and Smeets

Growing up in Bakerton, Springs in the 1950s and 60s, Smita Maharaj is puzzled by adult behaviour. Why must her tall, handsome father be obsequious to the police? Why must brown people sit in separate train carriages to white people? Why can't her mother see that a good education is more important than learning to make a perfect roti? Caught between the traditions of India and life in a modernising South Africa, between the violence of apartheid and the pull of her own desires, Smita struggles to find herself. As the Maharaj family grows, and her mother's obsessions with producing a son and finding suitable boys for her daughters to marry, Smita wrestles with satisfying her parents' wishes and following her own path, while confronting an old, painful family secret.