He leads his reader into the mindset of a resentful white Zimbabwean so convincingly that we are in danger of sympathising with it, especially with what we know of Mugabe's future actions. Wallace spares us nothing in his depiction of the brutality of the war that has just ended – one of Ivan's cohorts had a brother who was found "pinned to a tree with his own cock in his throat" – or in the inevitable fate of white farmers in Zimbabwe. We begin, slowly, to understand where Ivan's anger comes from. Soon enough, Robert is spending weekends at Ivan's family farm, run by his furious, abusive father. This isn't necessarily an entirely self-interested decision on Robert's part – though as a "Pom", the protection of Ivan would be useful – but Ivan embodies a rageful, wounded certainty that starts to appeal, dangerously, to Robert, who in his own way has also lost his home. Robert's friendship with Nelson doesn't last very long, certainly not when Ivan starts to take a fraternal interest in Robert. Then the story takes an unexpected – but entirely convincing – turn. Robert and Nelson bond quickly, though, promising to watch out for each other like brothers, and particularly to avoid the attentions of white, racist bully Ivan, who seethes that "his" country has been unfairly lost. Robert's father insists that he become friends with one of the school's few black pupils, the somewhat weightily named Nelson, who is perhaps a bit too saintly. At first, Out of Shadows seems to be setting itself up as a predictable white-man-in-Africa story.
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