Thematically, Deeper than Colour explores the wide gulf between our view of ourselves, how we are seen by others, and the dispassionate images seen through the cold lens of a camera. Angus has been traumatised by his time on the Border and now begins to film himself doing ordinary things, to try to understand his life. It is impossible, he says, for an abnormal person to have a normal life in an abnormal city like Johannesburg. The effect of the Border War on young white males has received little attention from novelists. Many troubled people are roaming our deeply divided country. It is these circumstances of present and remembered trauma that became the melting pot from which Deeper than Colour emerges.