The Xam people were a South African tribe who lived in the scrubland and communicated in a distinct click language. During the nineteenth century they were labelled as sub-human and hunted as animals by the Boers and the British. In 1870's Cape Town, a German philologist, Wilhelm Bleek, and his sister-in-law Lucy Lloyd, befriended some Xam bushmen and gradually began to document their language, resulting in an extraordinary archive of material. This is the story of Wilhelm and Lucy and of the discovered Xam culture of beautiful rock art and powerful fables. The fables will run throughout the book.