Joni, a young doctor, leaves behind a painful, failed love affair in her native Holland to work in a hospital in South Africa. She lives in a protected community with an African housemaid, Zanele, who tends to her needs, and offers her solid and devoted friendship without expecting much more than wages and a roof over her head in return.
Joni's life is ordered, rational, organised - keeping at bay the threat of spontaneity or surprise. This young and vital woman lives like a prisoner, sacrificing freedom in exchange for a protective sense of order. Her life is built upon a framework of duties and habits, and proceeds with the certainty, efficiency, and deadly pace of a machine.
South Africa seems a strange home for someone seeking this kind of sterile confinement, and gradually the lives of Zanele, along with her vivacious daughter, Shanla, begin to intrude on Joni's isolation. As they begin to forge a relationship with her, so the spirits of Africa penetrate her life and begin to erode its sense of controlled precision. And as Joni finally realises that she, too, has unwittingly become emotionally involved with the lives of her African friends, the vulnerability of her life in post-apartheid South Africa is made all too clear. In a mesmerising denouement, Joni finds herself at the mercy of 'the God of Africa' and exposed to chaotic, brutal forces that she cannot control.
'The Butterfly Month' is an edgy, haunting novel that derives immense power from its disarmingly gentle tone.
