Chase Your Shadow

In 2012, Oscar Pistorius became the first amputee runner in history to compete in the Olympics, and was hailed as a hero not only in his native South Africa but around the world. But everything changed for Pistorius in the early morning hours of February 14, 2013—Valentine's Day—when he shot and killed his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp. He was arrested and convicted for culpable homicide in a seven-month murder trial broadcast from Johannesburg to an international audience.

Acclaimed journalist John Carlin details the wrenching emotional breakdowns and merciless interrogation of the accused and the courtroom confrontation between a white, privileged, twenty-seven-year-old male athlete on trial for murder, and the black female judge who alone would decide his fate—held in a democratic country trying to exorcise its history of racial hatred and endemic violence against women—exposes the complex social and political realities of post-Apartheid South Africa.