The year 1994 symbolized the triumphal defeat in South Africa of almost three-and-a-half centuries of racial separation—dating from 1659, the year the Dutch East India Company planted a bitter almond hedge to keep indigenous people out of the company’s Cape outpost. But, Michael Schmidt reminds us, for the majority of people in what remains one of the world’s most unequal societies, the taste of bitter almonds lingers and exclusion from a dignified life remain the rule. Schmidt weaves an engrossing tapestry of the “view from below.” His cast of characters include neo-Nazis and the newly dispossessed, Boers and Bushmen, black illegal coal miners and a bank robber, witches and wastrels, love children and land claimants. Digging deep to find the roots of South Africa’s exclusionary practices, he also features a new generation of young people who, though their feet might be mired in the mud, have their eyes on the stars.