The Venter family are split. The women and children are at home, working on the farm. The men are away, fighting the British in the second Boer war. Life is hard, but the cause makes it worth the sacrifice. Then a detachment of 'Tommies' arrive at the Venter's farm, take the family captive and transfer them to a prison camp. Their home is razed to the ground, their belongings burned and their livestock killed. What follows is an intimate, emotional story of a family's survival, told through the eyes of 14-year-old Alletta, the strong, innocent eldest daughter. Never complaining, just living day-by-day and trusting her belief in God, Lettie begins to make new friends: first, a pair of Boer twins and later a 19-year-old British guard named Maples who patrols the camp. But can Maples be trusted and is it a betrayal of her family to feel this way about the enemy? A deeply emotional, small-scale portrait of family and love, set against the sweeping backdrop of the second Boer war at the turn of twentieth-century South Africa, The Undesirables (the British name for the residents of the camps) is the extraordinary new novel from the bestselling author of Guernica, winner of the Richard and Judy best summer read.