As a leader of the South African Coloured People's Organisation and a communist, Alex La Guma was charged with treason, banned, lived under house arrest, and ultimately forced into exile. This collection of his early work as a journalist and short story writer, well before he became a published novelist, provides unique cameos of South African life and politics during the late 1950s and early 1960s, invaluable for the recovery of important aspects of the history of South Africa’s liberation movement.

The collection also offers important insight into La Guma's development as a serious writer; many of the themes in his fiction are first encountered in these early articles and stories, providing seminal material for scholars seeking to understand the progression of his work.