Nineveh

Travel Guide

Cape Town -Authorsonlocation

The time-line and geography are a little shifted, adding I hope to the unsettling, heightened-reality feel I’m trying for. Location is important in these books: apart from being the place I know best, Cape Town is also uniquely suited to a tale of the human and the natural encroaching on each other. The city bleeds into wilderness along its edges – its built against the famous Table Mountain, between two wild oceans. Add to that Cape Town’s complex history and social makeup, and one can’t help but be aware of its grey areas and ambiguous spaces where ecosystems and communities overlap.

Every book creates its own sensory landscape; I think some writers are more attuned to certain senses as well. I’ve always thought of myself as a very visual writer, and Nineveh is full of lush images of glinting beetles. It’s a book, in part, about architecture and the built environment, and the visual contrast between the smooth, high, white walls of the luxury estate and the colourful, teeming, chaotic insects was important. With Green Lion, I was trying to tap into the sense-world of a big predator: there’s a lot of earthy description of odour.