Nineveh

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 residentsthe mysterious caretakers and scavenger crews that survive in its shadow. It is only when her estranged fathera professional exterminator fallen on hard timesreappears in her life, that Nineveh’s deeper secrets are exposed.

Henrietta Rose-Innes is a South African writer based in Cape Town and currently based in Norwich, UK.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 Francois 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 2007 South African PEN award for her short story, Poison”. She lives in Norwich, United Kingdom.