Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Nineveh
    Unavailable
    Nineveh
    Unavailable
    Nineveh
    Ebook255 pages4 hours

    Nineveh

    By Henrietta Rose-Innes

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    'A weird, elusive tale' [Sunday Telegraph] about people, places – and pests – by one of South Africa’s most exciting writers.

    ‘Focused and fresh' Stylist

    An elegant and evocative novel about people, place – and pests – by one of South Africa’s most exciting writers.

    Katya Grubbs, like her father before her, deals in ‘the unlovely and unloved’. Yet in contrast to her father, she is not in the business of pest extermination, but pest relocation.

    Katya’s unconventional approach brings her to the attention of a property developer whose luxury estate on the fringes of Cape Town, Nineveh, remains uninhabited thanks to an infestation of mysterious insects. As Katya is drawn ever deeper into the chaotic urban wilderness of Nineveh, she must confront unwelcome intrusions from her own past. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAardvark Bureau
    Release dateNov 15, 2016
    ISBN9781910709276
    Unavailable
    Nineveh
    Author

    Henrietta Rose-Innes

    Henrietta Rose-Innes is a novelist and short story writer from Cape Town, currently living in the UK while completing a PhD at the University of East Anglia. She won the Caine Prize for African Writing 2008 and the HSBC / PEN Short Story Prize 2007 and was runner-up in the BBC Short Story Award 2012. Her work is included in the Granta Book of the African Short Story (2011) and has been published in a number of languages, including French, Spanish and German.

    Related to Nineveh

    Related ebooks

    Historical Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Fantastic Mr Fox

      Feb 26, 2020

      Fantastic Mr Fox
      4 min read

    • Article

      Spell

      Apr 25, 2018

      Spell
      4 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      I learned the world through the bottoms of my feet, barein the creeks of summer, stepping on pebbles, the squidgeof moss between my toes. On hot asphalt, the hop and skipover cracks, feet already toughened by bramble, dirt, the pricklyground of pine

      4 min read

    • Article

      FOUR POEMS for Lucie Brock-Broido

      Jul 1, 2019

      Correspondence from Madam Rachel, Purveyor of Eternal Youth, to Mister Walter Potter, Anthropomorphic Dioramist, ca. 1880 Most Splendid Immortalist: Herewith you have a letter sent by my solicitor, writtenin my final leapt year, my sliver of pound ca

      3 min read

    • Article

      Six Bestiary Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      The world, is it finite? Pliny the Elderon what he saw and heard, 37 “books” toround that up, early C.E. as heproceeded to be infinite. His Naturalis. His Historia.First bestiary ever in Book 8. Land lifeand sea life and through-the-air and undergrou

      4 min read

    • Article

      Trouble In Paradise—other Adirondack Bloodsuckers

      Apr 18, 2024

      I love that I have come back to the Adirondacks, now with a place of my own at the edge of the wilderness. I grew up and attended high school not far from here, in the then “smallest incorporated village in New York State,” Galway, about two hours fr

      4 min read

    • Article

      El Valle, 1991

      Dec 15, 2020

      El Valle, 1991
      4 min read

    • Article

      Appetite For Destruction

      Feb 2, 2021

      Appetite For Destruction
      2 min read

    • Article

      Birds Of A Feather

      Sep 24, 2020

      Birds Of A Feather
      5 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      Jester-necked pile of ideasfattening by the cutting board.I have known the summer wall,it says slowly. The hillside facessouth into the valley.Dew on the tomato plants.Anything that grows, swarms,bunches itself against a stayand cannot stay. The vine

      4 min read

    • Article

      In The Thick Of It

      Feb 23, 2022

      In The Thick Of It
      3 min read

    • Article

      It’s Snow Joke

      Mar 25, 2020

      It’s Snow Joke
      4 min read

    • Article

      Awalk In The Veld

      Aug 27, 2021

      Awalk In The Veld
      5 min read

    • Article

      Wild For Magic Mushrooms

      Oct 13, 2021

      Wild For Magic Mushrooms
      3 min read

    • Article

      Trump? I Don’t Give A Rats

      Jan 12, 2020

      Trump? I Don’t Give A Rats
      2 min read

    • Article

      HINTERLAND & HAMLETS

      Jul 31, 2019

      HINTERLAND & HAMLETS
      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Mar 1, 2019

      Not humble, a quilt takes credit for inventing cinema. Jump cuts? Sure—look: two shepherdesses evading rockets. And here’s rosefilled toile-land again. Other quilts at the bottom of the fulllinen chest running away from bad shepherds in toile-l and f

      2 min read

    • Article

      Botanical Drawing

      May 17, 2018

      Contributed by Helene Wild  bins Down , there is a clump corner of Italian our Arum (Arum , italicum). Early one morning, after heavy overnight rain, I spied the dramatic orange fruits and the snails that had emerged from hiding to feast on their bou

      4 min read

    • Article

      Cul-de-Sac

      Dec 1, 2021

      That old rage for order: how my father drove a square mouthed mower over-and-back, over-and-back, each row of neatly trimmed grass cut just like he told his barber: boy’s short, regular. O pioneer, taming this joke bit of prairie, no bindweed or dog

      5 min read

    • Article

      Grand Designs

      Oct 17, 2021

      Grand Designs
      2 min read

    • Article

      My First Dormouse Of The Year

      Aug 17, 2023

      SPONSORED BY SWAROVSKI OPTIK YOU WON’T find a bed of delphiniums blue and geraniums red in my garden, but you will find a dormouse. Walk feather-light with me and I will introduce you to my garden’s rarest residents. Just a few days ago I saw my firs

      4 min read

    • Article

      No Time For Sentiment

      Oct 26, 2022

      No Time For Sentiment
      4 min read

    • Article

      Botanical Drawing

      Jan 23, 2020

      Down in the far corner of our back garden, next to the compost bins, there is a clump of Italian Arum (Arum italicum). Early one morning, after heavy overnight rain, I spied the dramatic orange fruits and the snails that had emerged from hiding to fe

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hitting The Hay

      Jun 24, 2020

      Hitting The Hay
      4 min read

    • Article

      Nature’s Fury

      Apr 27, 2022

      Nature’s Fury
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Nineveh

    3.5/5

    9 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      An unusual story about a 'humane pest controller' who is called to a job at an immense, luxurious residential complex called Nineveh, which has never been lived in because of a persistent problem with pests. The developer tells Katya that he'd already asked one pest controller to do the job, but he got ripped off. The previous pest controller turns out to be Katya's estranged father - but Katya is not like him - is she? The whole story is an extended metaphor for all the things we don't like to think about and how the cracks will eventually show - whether those cracks are in our own carefully constructed personalities - in our families - or in our societies (this last is only hinted at, in the name of the complex - Nineveh was the largest city in the world until "it was sacked by a coalition of its former subject peoples" {wikipedia}, a name with resonance for this gated community with a shanty town outside its gates).
    • 3/5
      Katya is a humane pest controller in South Africa. She learnt her craft from her father. They have a difficult relationship and are currently estranged but when she is asked to perform a difficult assignment on a luxury development, Nineveh, she senses his influence at play.The thread that runs through Nineveh is the search for ‘home’. Katya’s unstable father kept his family constantly on the move and she has struggled to settle. Her sister escaped his influence early and has immersed herself in suburban family life. The developer of Nineveh strives to create perfection, insulated from the poverty that surrounds his development.The plot is slightly jagged and unresolved, but that’s okay in what is an offbeat story. My difficulty with this book is the sheer amount of description. The author writes beautifully, giving a fresh perspective on everyday experiences. But just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should. Not all the time.When Katya visits a high-powered client at his office we accompany her through the lobby, up in the lift, along the corridor…We find out how it feels to have a bath and to walk to the mall. We’re never teleported from one place to another but always have to plod there in real time, like the unedited footage from a headcam.Despite these reservations, this book does stay with you. The pest metaphor is a powerful one. Who decides who gets to live within the walls, and who must be kept out, distanced, even destroyed? How does the outsider, despite everything, find a niche and survive?Nineveh is definitely worth a read, but you might want to skim a bit.*I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.