In a world where truth is forbidden, an inspiring teacher dares to instill in her students lessons not found in schoolbooks. In doing so, she challenges their freedom and hers.

Poetry, politics, madness, and desire collide in the true story of the woman hailed as South Africa's finest poet. In 1960s Cape Town, as Apartheid steals the expressive rights of blacks and whites alike, young Ingrid Jonker finds her freedom scrawling verse while frittering through a series of stormy affairs. Amid escalating quarrels with her lovers and her rigid father, a parliament censorship minister, the poet witnesses an unconscionable event...

Ben du Toit is a schoolteacher who always has considered himself a man of caring and justice, at least on the individual level. When his gardener's son is brutally beaten up by the police at a demonstration by black school children, he gradually begins to realize his own society is built on a pillar of injustice and exploitation.

When anti-apartheid activist Shack Twala is freed from prison, he quickly runs into trouble with the police. British engineer Keogh helps Twala elude a sadistic government official, but as both men, now fugitives, race 900 miles to cross the border to safety, they are drawn into a conspiracy much bigger and deadlier than they realize.