An architect suffering from cancer meets a teenage girl gone astray and decides to put his own wishes first, for once, without caring about what will fall apart because of it. Three boys go on a hunt for a green mamba which has killed a little girl, but they don’t realise that there are other predators than those they have been warned about by the adults. A maid tries do avert disaster when her employer decides to help her sick husband.

Twenty years have passed since apartheid, but the new South Africa is still characterized by segregation, fear and violence – albeit with new lords. In the region KwaZulu-Natal on the east coast of South Africa, right next to the mile-long beaches, there are shanty towns, Zulu villages and gated communities. The characters in Åsa Foster’s debut book all have something gnaw- ing inside them; something they can rarely put their finger on, but which still makes them either break habits or set course to the darkness within themselves.

You don’t always have to talk about it is a short story collection about the balance of power: between black and white, rich and poor, men and women, and about what happens when the balance is disturbed.