This chapter outlines the topic and organization of the book and sketches Bosman’s life and cultural context in early twentieth-century South Africa. It also sketches the cultural context of the late nineteenth-century community about which he writes. This was an insular rural community whose attitudes were additionally shaped by extreme bigotry toward the black population it had fought against, displaced, and put into hard service; by two wars with Britain over local control, the first won and the second lost; and by an often hardscrabble existence. Bosman works with this context largely of profound human failing and hardship to produce a world of humor and charm, and he does so without covering over its harsh and ugly aspects in any way.