João is a book of sixty-two sonnets recounting twelve years of the life of a poet who travels widely, encountering friends and loves, translators and, sometimes, famous authors. Its protagonist is João of eGoli; his christian name is Portuguese for "John" and his epithet - "Place of Gold" - is that of his birthplace, Johannesburg, in Zulu. The linked poems reveal João not only as a cosmopolitan traveller, but also as someone sensative to others preconceptions to how they are also haunted by history. The book's concluding poems evoke a genealogy for João's restlessness: Cape Town-born parents, Cape Malay friends, a Brazilian uncle, and the great-grandmother from an island, Tristan da Cunha, in the middle