Book 2 Streets Paved with Gold

This story is set about fifty years ago when draconian laws were regularly passed through parliament. We follow the life of a Northern Sotho man working as a barman in a hotel in down-town Johannesburg. The hotel owner is Austrian and out of sympathy with the prevailing political developments. He has taken a black mistress at the time when the infamous Mixed Marriages Act and the Immorality Act (now abolished) were passed through parliament. The acts banned mixed marriages and sex across the colour bar. The hotel owner is a part-time musician and more interested in playing jazz than in running a hotel. The barman wants to learn to play the trumpet and the hotel owner agrees to teach him. However, the police close in on the hotel owner and the barman is faced with a moral dilemma: should he co-operate with the authorities and betray his mentor for breaking the law, or should he sacrifice a friend who herself is being threatened by the security police in order to protect his mentor.

The original Kreutzer Sonata was a violin sonata composed by Beethoven and premiered by a black, British violinist by the name of Brigetower who read the score from sight, a no mean feat. However, the two men fell out and Beethoven changed the dedication to a violinist called Kreutzer who did not particularly like Beethoven’s music and probably never played the piece in public.