Nineveh - by Henrietta Rose-Innes (Paperback)

About the Book

"There's an out-of-control swarm of insects hampering the completion of Nineveh, a luxury estate outside Cape Town. When Katya Grubbs, proprietor of Painless Pest Relocations, is called in, she discovers far more to exorcise than the mysterious infestation. Her own past returns to torment her in the form of her unruly father and the chaos he creates. With Nineveh crumbling around her, Katya is forced to question her own place in a rapidly changing world."--Back cover.

Book Synopsis

Katya Grubbs is Cape Town's only ethical pest removal specialist. She expertly wrangles every manner of wild critter, creature or beast with the help of her unwitting nephew, Toby. When she is hired to remove the exotic beetles that have overrun Nineveh, a new luxury housing development on the coast, Katya finds that bugs aren't the only unwelcome creatures hiding in the new (but inhabited) apartments. As she investigates further, it becomes clear that Nineveh is fast becoming an environmental, not to mention architectural, blunder. With marshlands encroaching on its borders, and the nearby seaside more menace than attraction, Katya becomes immersed in the world of Nineveh's few residents--the mysterious caretakers and scavenger crews that survive in its shadow. It is only when her estranged father--a professional exterminator fallen on hard times--reappears in her life, that Nineveh's deeper secrets are exposed.

Review Quotes

"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

About the Author

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."