Leon Lipschitz is a bisexual Jewish white South African slob whose days and nights pass, for the most part, in a pleasant haze of vodka, cocaine and sex. South African politics definitely don't figure in Leon's life. But when both he and his liberal English wife fall in love with a baby-faced Boer boy called Gertjie, some tough truths have to be faced - and eventually are, on the tortured surface of the veld. This 1991 novel doesn't have the concentrated power of. Sher's superb Cheap Lives, but it's amusing and disturbing all the same, and Sher's gift for weaving slices of the esoteric into his narrative is as reliable as ever. Here, the title refers to a non-Muslim slave in the Ottoman Court whose duties included falconry, turban dressing, shampooing and offering himself for sex. So don't say we didn't tell you.