Violence makes a strange ending for a love story, even if the setting is South Africa. But because Dan Jacobson has the ability to create sensitive, intelligent people and make them act sensitively and intelligently despite the background of guilt and shock, The Evidence of Love is neither propaganda nor sensationalism. It is, instead, a considerable artistic achievement, all the more impressive because it was written calmly out of the same tensions as created the South African explosion.

It is the story of a love-affair between a Cape Coloured boy and a white girl….

The Evidence of Love might have been just another case-history. But since Jacobson is a novelist, not a politician, he knows none of the answers in advance. Despite the ending, I'm not even sure he knows them in retrospect. He has only an artist's answer—people. It is a matter not of dogma, but...