A black man’s heart is transplanted into a white South African, and the sudden metamorphic changes rock a nation
Apartheid-ridden South Africa is the setting for this remarkable novel by the wife of W. E. B. Du Bois. Young Dr. Vermeer, of sturdy Dutch stock and an established Afrikaans family, who is his nation’s foremost doctor, undergoes emergency cardiac transplant surgery—and receives the heart of a black man. A gradual metamorphosis takes place as the doctor’s heart begins to beat to the rhythm of a black compatriot. Life takes on a different perspective as he starts to think and act as a black man, and is torn between the obvious need to preserve his secret and his intense desire to submit to his new feelings.
This dramatic story of a man’s inner conflict and love for two women, one black, one white, builds to an intriguing crescendo that leads to a provocative, yet touching conclusion.
