Silhouettes is a collection of reflective and personal poetry covering three decades. As the title indicates, the poems provide some information about an author who is otherwise a private man, although he has a high public profile in South Africa.

The poems contained in the book range from those dealing with universal and everyday matters like love and its various stages, to those dealing with uniquely South African matters when that country was undergoing a transition from apartheid to a democracy. They were written in different parts of the world, including the USA, the United Kingdom and, of course, South Africa.