Police question a Cape Town female escort about the whereabouts of her client, the mysterious and impassioned Mr C. An elderly writer reflects on her experiences of the struggle and the complicated allegiances it has brought her. A father works together with his daughter to bring, as he thinks, Bach to Africa. Sharmilla and Other Portraits offers a dynamic series of insights into a South Africa in edgy transition. Its vivid and varied narratives follow a range of displaced children, mothers, and domestic workers, a stadium manager, an AIDS patient and an office secretary, as they look in on the new and changing situation. In Sharmilla and Other Portraits the internationally celebrated writer Elleke Boehmer distils a compelling cycle of radiant snapshots detailing lived lives and their interwoven and secret undercurrents. Sharmilla and Other Portraits will appeal to all readers interested in the intimate grief and pleasures of South Africans today.