Henrietta Rose-Innes is a South African writer based in Cape Town and Norwich, U.K. Nineveh was shortlisted for the M-Net Literary Award and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, and in 2015 (in French translation, Ninive) it won the François Sommer Literary Prize. She's previously published a collection of short stories, Homing, and the novels Green Lion, Shark's Egg and The Rock Alphabet.
In 2012 her story "Sanctuary" came second in the BBC
International Short Story Prize. In 2008 she won the Caine Prize
for African Writing, for which she was shortlisted in 2007. Also in
2007, she was awarded the South African PEN award for her short
story, "Poison."
"White South African writer Rose-Innes makes her American debut
with a nimble, intriguing novel about a second-generation Cape Town
exterminator--er, ethical pest-removal specialist... A persuasive,
witty exploration of a tough and unconventional young woman--and a
consistently lively account of the entanglements of cultural
politics, class, and architecture in contemporary South Africa."
--Kirkus Reviews "South African writer Rose-Innes creates a
thoughtful, textured narrative... Surreal in style and atmosphere,
yet grounded in the reality of place and the ever-present threat of
insects, this is a quiet but deep look at the ecosystems we create
for ourselves as well as those we can't escape." --Publishers
Weekly "Henrietta Rose-Innes writes an admirably taut, clean
prose... a welcome addition to the new South African literature."
--J.M. Coetzee, author of Disgrace "A gripping, thrilling allegory
of a troubled nation, Nineveh is executed with wit, panache,
precision and something that I can only call wounded love for the
country the author calls her home." --Neel Mukherjee, author of The
Lives of Others "Rose-Innes is a pleasure to read-- inventive,
intelligent and entertaining. In Nineveh, she has created a densely
layered, totally absorbing tragicomedy for our anxious time and
place." --Ivan Vladislavic, author of Double Negative "I love
Henrietta Rose-Innes' work. With plotlines that are wittily
subversive and language that is whippet-lean, it is long overdue
for discovery by a wider readership." --Patrick Gale, author of A
Place Called Winter "The multidimensional novel recalls Italo
Calvino's beautiful, challenging and descriptive novel, Invisible
Cities ... Such delicacy is evident in Nineveh." --Sunday
Independent "Visitors to Cape Town wanting a memento of the city to
take home will do well to put this accomplished tragicomedy in
their suitcases. Nineveh is beautiful, eccentric and thoroughly
readable." --FMR Book Choice "Relentless and perfect." --Mail &
Guardian "What a delightful novel Rose-Innes has worked out of her
offbeat material ... even the caterpillars and metallic longhorn
beetles that creep through the text shine with iridescent toughness
and gleam with humour." --Cape Times "In Rose-Innes' latest novel,
the gently wry, elegantly written Nineveh, the completion of a
contemporary luxury housing development in the area outside of Cape
Town is impeded by the confusing excesses of its location,
geography and environment. It's not just (beautiful) beetles that
swarm through Nineveh; subterranean, buried and otherwise unknown
forces do, too, challenging far more than the control methods of
Katya Grubbs' humane 'Painless Pest Relocations' business - but
also those of her sense of home and history, and of what our place
might be in a transforming world." --Africa in Words "A strange and
apocalyptic tale about a swarm of insects which overruns a luxury
housing development outside Cape Town, causing mayhem and
destruction. A pest remover - named Katya Grubs - is called in but
finds she has much more on her hands than just the bugs." --Africa
is a Country
Rose-Innes's descriptions of Nineveh and of the looming presence of
infesting insects squirming just beneath the surface are
nonetheless both beautifully written and resolutely Ballardian in
tone. --Geoff Manaugh, author of A Burglar's Guide to the City
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