Half-African, half-Indian and beautiful, Tandia is just a teenager when she is brutally attacked and violated by the South African police. Desperately afraid and consumed by hatred for the white man, Tandia seeks refuge in a brothel deep in the veld. There she learns to use her brilliant mind and extraordinary looks as weapons for the battles that lie ahead: she trains as a terrorist. But then Tandia meets a man with a past as strange as her own: Peekay, an Oxford undergraduate who is also the challenger for the world welterweight boxing championship - and a white man. And in a land where mixed relationships are outlawed, their growing love can only have the most explosive consequences.