The Smell of Apples is a historical novel. Published in the mid-1990s, the novel recreates the early-1970s era of apartheid, South Africa’s pernicious system of laws that, like the Jim Crow-era legislation in American history, institutionalized racism and legalized white supremacy. Although South Africa’s economic success could not have been achieved and sustained without the native labor force, its white government was determined to maintain a social philosophy that placed whites above blacks.

At the time that Behr chronicles, the white government unapologetically defied growing international outrage over the amorality of its reliance on propaganda, police brutality, paranoia, and intimidation. The goal of apartheid legislation was simple: Keep the majority black population segregated in squalid neighborhoods, denied advanced education, prevented from voting, barred from public demonstrations and any expressions of dissent, and limited to menial employment.

Published the same year that the last vestiges of apartheid legislation were repealed, The Smell of Apples does not have the traditional moral framework that perspective often brings to works of historical fiction. Because Behr grew up within a privileged white family in the 1970s and benefited from the apartheid system, he cannot simply tsk-tsk “that” South Africa. That South Africa is his South Africa—which gives this historical novel its moral immediacy.