Short stories
Homing
First published 2010, Penguin Random House
Translated into Turkish by Ezgi Kıymaças and published as Hep Eve 2016, Yüz Kitap
“Perfectly crafted stories … Rose-Innes is masterful in creating multiple universes, each of which stands alone. No story disappoints … the intimate life of each character is as satisfyingly real as spending an afternoon with an intriguing new acquaintance.” – Janet van Eeden
When the boulder came down from the mountainside, it must’ve made a sound like the end of the world, rocking the ground with each thunderous landing and recoil. It must have sung through the air, thrashing the bush on the slope into a sappy pulp with every bounce, on its way to embed itself in the lawn of the luxury holiday home below.
A wife lies to her husband, seeking refuge from her dowdy life in the plush hotel that overlooks their home. A man ascends the glass-topped dome of a mall in search of a lost childhood memory. History comes to life for a young boy trapped in the city library. An elderly woman nurses a football star back to health …
In these evocative and exquisitely crafted short stories, Henrietta Rose-Innes gives us an extraordinary glimpse into a selection of ordinary lives. Diverse characters – a teenager learning to be a boyfriend, an ageing copywriter, a girl on the brink of womanhood – are animated in sparse, sparkling prose. The Cape Town they mostly inhabit is both a playground and an obstacle course, filled with menace and delight. Through this landscape, like the pigeons in the title story, they find new paths home – and are themselves transformed by the journey.
Animalia Paradoxa
First published 2019, Boiler House Press
Animalia Paradoxa: the taxonomic category created by Carl Linnaeus for mythical, dubious and imaginary animals.
A virus inflames a woman with mortal desire; a colonial naturalist seeks an impossible specimen; invisible violence stalks a safari and a man out walking enters into a strange shadow dance with a prizefighter. Ranging from taut human drama to phantasmagoria, these stories make rich and strange connections – between ancient and new, human and animal, Africa and Europe, reality and dream. Taken together, in prose of great precision and beauty, the stories in Animalia Paradoxa map the complexities of the human specimen, in all its troubling glory.
Dream Homes
Schnappschüsse und Kurzgeschichten aus Kapstadt
A selection of Henrietta's short stories and essays translated into German by Susanne Hartmann-Olpak
Published 2008, Merz & Solitude
Reservat
Published 2019, Karavan
'Reservat' is the Swedish translation of Henrietta's story 'Sanctuary', which took second place in the 2012 BBC International Short Story Competition.
Translated by Birgitta Wallin and illustrated by Kayo Mpoyi.
Karavan noir is a series of mini-books, each containing an illustrated short story. The series includes crime stories as well as stories with elements of mystery and enigma.
'She has gone alone into the wilderness to camp next to a roaring river. There, she usually feels peace and seclusion, but this time it's different. On the other side of the river, near the lion sanctuary, there is a newly built holiday home and a family has just arrived. The usual stillness doesn't want to come. Instead of a relaxing weekend, the narrator now witnesses an escalating family drama.'
