In A city imagined, the editor has asked a number of South Africa's writers to produce a piece of writing in which they express their relationship to Cape Town and, above all, their sense of the unique genius or spirit of this city. The range of voices is wide, the angles of vision many, the results always surprising. What emerges from A city imagined is a composite portrait of Cape Town which is infinitely more various, heterogeneous, complex even in its beauty, than that to be found in the standard treatments of the place.