White Scars also explores the moments at which Hirson read the four books. They include the arrest of his anti-apartheid activist father, Baruch Hirson in the early 1960's; his own move to Paris in the 1970's; his father's death, and the end of a period of mourning for him. In weaving together these two strands in White Scars, Hirson has referred to many other texts, including other books by Breyten Breytenbach, Raymond Carver and Georges Perec. He has also explored a constellation of key words, which trace, in different ways, the political space of apartheid South Africa and the transience of one who is now looking back at that time through the prism of distance.
