HIGH LOW IN-BETWEEN

Imraan Coovadia’s third novel is set in Durban.

Adams Booksellers and Umuzi, an imprint of Random House Struik Publishers, recently launched Imraan Coovadia’s third novel - High Low In-between

Set in Durban and KZN, High Low In-between charts the relationship between Nafisa, who is coming to terms with her husband’s murder , the people around her , her dysfunctional family as well as her patient, Millicent Dhlomo, who is dying of Aids.

With gathering momentum, the novel exposes the reader to Nafisa’s world of organ donation, greedy Aids denialists, quack doctors, bribes and the looming threats by the South African Revenue Service. Having been part of the struggle, Nafisa now faces the sinister complications of the post-apartheid dispensation and finds herself ostracised once more.

We learn with Nafisa what it is to live in a time of various plagues: in which a slip of a needle is a prospective death, in which your husband can be murdered because he received a kidney he didn’t know was acquired illicitly, in which death by Aids has become a currency in the hands of the morally bereft and the politically expedient, and in which acquiring, concealing, and channelling funds determines the lives and prospects of us all.

Born in 1970, Imraan Coovadia has lived in London, Melbourne, Boston and New York – never really having left Durban. He is a much-published U.S. academic and holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard, a Masters degree from Cornell and a PhD from Yale. He has taught 19th-Century Studies and Creative Writing at a number of U.S. universities and was Assistant Professor at Adelphi University, NY, before his appointment to teach Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town in 2006. He is the author of The Wedding and Green-eyed Thieves, both runners-up for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize