The story of 'Kathie' by Dora Taylor is a remarkable one — not only because of its intrinsic literary value, but because it happened to be published at all.

Written in the 1950s, 'Kathie' was published for the first time in 2008. The author, who never managed to publish any of her fictional prose during her lifetime died in exile in 1976, leaving one copy of her precious manuscript.

This strange time-warp enables us to view the past with fresh eyes, to see it from the surprisingly insightful perspective of a woman who never lived to see the end of apartheid or revisit the land and people about which she writes so tenderly. There is no retrospective re-evaluation or correction, nor are there any guarantees that South Africa will emerge from its shattered state a united rainbow nation.

Because it was written by a white woman in the 1950s, there are also elements which might be scoffed at by the jaded contemporary South African reader — the anglicisation of the thoughts and speech of all the characters and the idealisation of the 'native'. However there is also a very real sense in which Taylor has captured the snobberies and intricate race hierarchies of the time.

Her novel provides a fresh glimpse into the past, and the fact that this glimpse is filtered through the rose-tinted lenses of a liberal white woman does not make it any less accurate or enlightening.

Kathie Liedeman, who has the dark skin of her coloured father, is a disappointment to her social-climbing mother and near-white grandmother. When her fair-skinned younger sister Stella is born, the two matriarchs rejoice that they have finally found a way into the world of white privilege.

When Stella is sent to a 'white' school, Kathie — who adores and cherishes her younger sister — realises that she is 'different'. Immune to the shame foisted upon her by her mother and grandmother because of her strong character and caring nature, Kathie establishes a place for herself in the world permitted to her. Stella strives to establish her legitimacy in the white world and, in doing so, becomes lost in the sea of shame and disappointment, without family or friends to anchor her.

Their lives, so irrevocably rent asunder by the random designation of pigmentation and the whims of their mother, touch briefly as the two mature into very different women.

This tale of unyielding times, trapped people and nonsensical laws is, at the same time, a story of hope and redemption. It is a pity that Taylor's novel was not published in her lifetime, but it is no less valuable now.