Set in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, shortly after the millenium, Dream Of The Dog centres on Patricia and Richard Wiley, an eldery white couple who are packing up to leave the farm they have sold to developers. Their preparations are interrupted by the arrival of a young man – Look Smart – who used to be one of the black workers on their estate until he disappeared 15 years ago. 

The day before Look Smart left, something terrible happened on the Wileys’s farm. But everyone has a different memory of the dreadful event and their own role in it. As the different accounts of their shared past are unravelled, they are all forced to confront their own versions of the truth, with shocking ramifications for their lives today.

Dream Of The Dog is a richly textured and complex story of South Africa’s emerging democracy and its continued negotiation with its past in order to find a workable identity for its future.