This is the new, fully updated, first paperback edition of Emma Guest's acclaimed book that explores how the AIDS crisis has devastated the world's poorest continent, and shows how families, charities and governments are responding to the next wave of the crisis - millions of orphans.

Based on extensive interviews, Guest lets people tell their own stories in their own words. The result is a moving and disturbing account of the experiences of orphans, street children, grandparents, aunts, foster parents, charity and social workers and foreign donors across South Africa, Zambia and Uganda.