The year is 1988. Eighteen-year-old Thomas Green, weed smoker and would-be artist, has been plucked from his comfortable, suburban existence in apartheid South Africa and thrown onto the frontline of his country’s war against what it sees as terrorism. As a conscript in the South African Defence Force, it’s Thomas’s job to watch the hot, sandy border for signs of the mysterious ‘red menace’. There are no bars nearby, no art galleries, no cinemas and no air-conditioned shopping malls. Worst of all, there are no lithe young ladies willing to pose nude for an eager painter-in-training. What Thomas has found in plentiful supply are sand dunes, barbwire fences and landmines. He may as well have landed in hell. When a man approaches on foot from Angola, the place where the...