Erich Rautenbach's autobiographical account concerns a few years in his life in South Africa immediately after he left school in the early 1970s. Ignoring his call-up for national service, Erich begins a wandering existence as a marijuana dealer, drifting between his supplier in KwaZulu and his outlets in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Eventually he is apprehended, and after a time in John Vorster Square and The Fort in Johannesburg, he is sent to Sterkfontein Sanatorium for 28 days' observation and testing to determine his sanity. But Erich has other ideas and plans to escape.
This book recreates the subculture of Johannesburg and Cape Town and provides a commentary on the paranoia and neurosis of the apartheid state. The particular value of this story is in the way it is told. In its zany, unconventional way of reporting on reality, it is reminiscent of the American Beat Generation of the 1950s.