Niki is a female protagonist whose story is graphic and includes sexual violence.
We meet Niki, a South African. She is modeling for a priest who is using her as a subject for a painting, a human study. The man is named Father Claerhout, and it is well known among the working women of the town that he will pay prostitutes to let him paint them nude. Although the priest is pure in intention, the women must hike through the country where they are harassed by misogynists.
Niki is arrested because she gives birth to a mixed child, half black like her, half white and fair like her father. Her child breaks the apartheid laws, so she does time before returning to her work, and to her visits to the priest. Eventually, she begins understanding that the men harass her because they're thirsty for her attention and their unable to win her over. She begins to enjoy their needy attention. She sustains considerable sexual harassment, and she is raped by a white man who views her as an object.
As time goes on, she gives birth to another child, a boy named Viliki. They family grows, and when Viliki is a young man, he becomes political. When apartheid ends, that doesn't end their troubles. The narrator describes the next few decades as Viliki's political interests grow, and as Niki thinks back on her life, and the assumptions that were made about her.
