With a story full of twists and turns, Night of the fireflies follows in the great tradition of African culture in which real and unreal are merely two sides of the same coin.

With a story full of twists and turns, Night of the fireflies follows in the great tradition of African culture in which real and unreal are merely two sides of the same coin. Set in the nightmarish landscape of the traumatized city of Maputo, capital of Mozambique, the story unfolds over 15 days in the Christmas of 1984. On a desperate quest to find his lost lover in the city, the narrator becomes a guest in the household of Ranier, a highly eccentric mixed race man whose psychic powers are startlingly revealed in his extraordinary healing of a dying soldier. A testament to experience that lies beyond the confines of the 'normal' the novel explores the so-called supernatural world in which psychic energy is a powerful tool for discovery. Repelled at first by Ranier's physical presence and bizarre behaviour, the narrator eventually succumbs to his charisma and colludes in Ranier's elaborate devising of his own suicide. Curiosity becomes his best tactic for survival, allowing him to keep peeling away the layers of mystery that surround his host and to try and comprehend the complexities of Ranier's cosmology.