Hilde Roos provides a valuable social and institutional history of the Eoan Group, a long-standing South African cultural group with a troubled history. While this book does trace the ways in which the Group subscribed to the agendas of the apartheid regime on the surface, Roos makes an important intervention in illustrating the often-blurred lines between complicity and resistance that characterised apartheid South Africa. British immigrant Helen Southern-Holt founded the Group in 1933 in Cape Town to uplift the coloured population in South Africathrough what she characterised as the ‘civilising qualities’ of Western culture (18). ‘Coloured’ in both this book and in its usage during apartheid refers to people of mixed race, or to people who do not fit clearly into the racial categories of white, black or Indian. Under apartheid, the coloured community had fewer rights than white people, but more rights than black Africans. While the term is still in use today, it is a contested one, as it is viewed by some as an artificial construct left over from the apartheid government.

Southern-Holt's founding of the Group on coloured upliftment through the ‘civilising qualities’ of Western culture was indicative of the complex nature of coloured identity under apartheid – a theme that permeates this book. Some coloured people sought to emulate Western culture through activities such as opera performance as a means of advancing their sociopolitical station to the status of white South Africans, though such a lofty goal was impossible under apartheid. This created tensions both between the African and coloured communities, and within the coloured community itself. Politically active members of the coloured community criticised the Group as a tool of the apartheid government and as disloyal to the coloured community because it accepted apartheid government funding, performed to segregated audiences, and performed Western operatic repertoire with utmost fidelity to the text. There were members of the Group who were politically active, though some later left the Group over political disagreements