This is a collection of traditional tales and true-life stories of contemporary communities in the Southern African Great Karoo, the historical region of Bushmanland and the “Bushmen”. Circa 1870, the ancestors of these men and women collaborated with two European scholars to document their language and traditions, thereby creating one of humanity's essential archives. The contemporary accounts are linked to those collected a century and a half ago and bear witness to the resilience, tenacity, and creativity of a people whose physical and cultural extinction was considered inevitable.

The clever Jackal and the evil Hyena, the unpredictable Water Snake and the disturbing outlaws Dirk Ligter and Jan Thomas, among other characters that populate these pages, make the Karoo a landscape animated by the wisdom and beliefs of its inhabitants, who are not descended in vain from the first peoples of the African continent.