[We Are Not Such Things] could not be more timely, given how many youthful black South Africans are now expressing anger at — and betrayal by — the Mandela project, which they say provided nothing more than a shimmering rainbow that screened a deeper entrenchment of inequality … where her book is gripping, explosive even, is in the kind of obsessive forensic investigation — of the clues, and into the soul of society — that is the legacy of highbrow sleuths from Truman Capote to Janet Malcolm … she crafts a close sense of place that rivals the work of Katherine Boo — although her work is at the other extreme to Boo’s, because of van der Leun’s presence within it. In a way that is increasingly fashionable, We Are Not Such Things is a personal quest, sometimes too much so.
