Ninevah - a fable for our times [a book review]

INFECTING THE CITY: A REVIEW OF NINEVEH, by Henrietta Rose-Innes (Umuzi 2011)

Rob Gaylard


Henrietta Rose-Innes has constructed a subtle but compelling narrative which encourages us to explore Cape Town, the city we inhabit (and often take for granted). We humans are, increasingly, city dwellers, but what does it mean to live in a city? And how many ways are there of doing this? A city is, almost by definition, an imposition on the natural order. Are all cities doomed to decay and collapse? This novel is in fact a variation on an ancient theme, as the introductory quotations from Zephania and the Lament for Ur suggest.
The novel exposes us to a variety of perspectives, from the grand designs of Mr Brand, the property developer, to the differing positions of the members of the dysfunctional Grubb family (Katya, the protagonist/focaliser, her conformist sister Alma, her nephew Toby, and her anarchic father Len), to the views of the excluded outsiders, Derek (the vagrant who lives in a park – and moves into Katya’s garage), and Nosisi (the young woman who lives in an informal settlement just beyond the borders of Ninevah). There are also Reuben (a local) and Pascal (from the DRC), the outsiders who guard the gates of Nineveh and provide a shaky kind of security. Ultimately, the novel leads us to consider the claims of non-human life, the frogs and insects whose natural habitat is the swamp just beyond the walls of Nineveh, and which threaten to irrupt into its confines and render it uninhabitable. These are the “fellow residents” with whom Katya is keen to “open negotiations”.
The focus of our interest is Katya, who runs Painless Pest Relocations, and whose philosophy could be summed up as “live and let live”. Not for her Len’s more ruthless programme of pest eradication and extermination. Her approach is one of humane relocation, illustrated early on by her gentle and caring treatment of the colony of caterpillars that “infest” a tree in the Brand’s palatial suburban estate. By implication the novel questions the way we categorise other creatures (threatened species/ pest/ vermin) and impose our own order on nature. At first Katya seems the polar opposite of her more cynical, violent father, who scoffs at her attempts and defies social convention. Must he be shunned by his daughters – or should he be brought back into the family circle?
In a variety of ways, then, the novel explores the politics of inclusion and exclusion: the normative, exclusionary, repressive impulses are familiar from a local and global history of conquest and colonialism. Van Riebeeck’s hedge, the novel reminds us, was the earliest of these local attempts at exclusion. Katya’s house seems to be located in Observatory, and the Liesbeck River was once a frontier. The grandest attempt at exclusion is the construction of Nineveh, built on reclaimed land, and vaguely inspired by the Mesopotamian city (one our earliest historical cities). This version of Nineveh is, of course, an absurd and vulgar imitation, impossibly clean and sterile (“immaculate”) and mysteriously threatened with infestation by “the gogga” (which is, perhaps not coincidentally, a Khoi Kkoi word). Katya herself is briefly tempted by the cleanliness and security apparently offered by Nineveh (and Mr Brand) but deep down she knows better. The novel charts this recognition, and her apparent reconciliation with her disreputable father (who is, at a gut level, opposed to everything that Nineveh represents).
The novel concludes with an alternative, inclusive vision of the city, constituted as much by its informal settlements (which seem to grow organically) as by its more ordered suburbs. What price order, it asks. Buried in the subtext of the novel are hints of the ways in which we classify and seek to exclude other human beings (“vagrants”, “squatters”, “aliens” , “foreign nationals” ) – and the xenophobic and apartheid-era consequences of this mindset are still with us.
This is a thought-provoking, densely imagined work of fiction in which no detail is out of place. It is a seamless and unusual blend of different modes of writing – the comic, the gothic and the social realist. It will appeal to any reader willing to ask questions and probe beneath the surface of our familiar urban reality. The cracks that open up in our suburban walls are a reminder of how precarious the divide is between “inside” and “outside”.
Rose-Innes has previously published two novels, Shark’s Egg and The Rock Alphabet and 2010 saw the release of Homing, a collection of short stories. This latest novel will add to her growing reputation as one of our finest writers.