How has Duncan come to abandon the sanctity of human life they taught him? What kind of loyalty do parents owe a self-confessed murderer? In post-apartheid South Africa the defense of their son's life is in the hands of a black man: Hamilton Motsamai, a flamboyant, distinguished advocate returned from political exile. The balance of everything in the parents' world is turned upside down.

The House Gun is a passionate narrative of that final text of complex human relations we call love, moving from the intimate to the general condition. If it is a parable of present violence it is also an affirmation of the will to reconciliation that starts where it must, between individual men and women.