In this novel from the South African winner of the Caine prize for African writing, Katya Grubbs runs a pest control service with a difference: its motto is “relocation, not extermination”. When a property magnate employs Katya to dispose of the beetle infestation ruining his new development, Nineveh, she notices its strange sterility in contrast to the surrounding swamp, where “everything is insistently alive and pushing to enter”. Katya soon discovers, however, that the exclusive building is more porous than it seems – with ways in and out not just for the beetles, which come swarming after the rain,but unofficial passages for unofficial people too. This story of pest control is surprisingly gripping, but its strength lies in Rose-Innes’s preoccupation with the “shifting, restless … discontented city” of Cape Town, “convulsing in a frenzy of urban ants-in-the-pants”. Houses are surrounded by electric fences and have their bells “removed so beggars don’t disturb”, as the wealthy emphatically assert boundaries the author shows to be futile. Her pests are persistent and ultimately powerful – an effective metaphor to argue for a more permeable, equal city.
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