News archive

November 21 2021
Henrietta was one of the judges for this year's British Fantasy Awards - the collections category. It's a wonderful shortlist and I'm having a ball doing the hard hard work of adjudicating. Congrats to all the shortlisted authors. https://britishfantasysociety.org/awards/british-fantasy-awards-2020-shortlists/

 

April 14 2020

‘The biters and the bitten’: read Henrietta’s piece ‘Zoonotic’ about spider bites and lockdown in PEN Transmissions.

 

January 16 2020

The new issue of the Johannesburg Review of Books is online now. The January “Conversation Issue” includes my interview with Gail Fincham for the South African Literary magazine Tydskrif vir Letterkunde – we chat my writing and forthcoming novel, Stone Plant. (In English) Read the full interview here. I value a destabilising sense of estrangement …

 

November 5 2019

To celebrate twenty years of the Caine Prize, Africa’s premier literary competition, an anthology of short stories featuring all twenty winners so far has been published by New Internationalist. It contains my story ‘Poison’, as well as work by upcoming and leading African writers Leila Aboulela, Helon Habila, Binyavanga Wainana, Yvonne Owuor, Brian Chikwava, Mary Watson, Monica …

 

November 5 2019

Book blogger David Hebblethwaite has written a generous review of my collection of short stories, Animalia Paradoxa, which you can read here: “An evocative and affecting collection of stories. It leaves me keen to read more.” Animalia Paradoxa is available from Boiler House Press.

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November 5 2019

I recently was interviewed by literary scholar Gail Fincham for South African literary journal Tydskrif vir Letterkunde. It’s a wide-ranging discussion about my writing and influences, past and present. You can access it here. I value a destabilising sense of estrangement in writing; among other things, it is one way to approach writing about the …

 

November 5 2019

I debuted a short extract from my work-in-progress novel Stone Plant in Cape Town at the annual South African Halloween Horrorfest, as part of the Bloody Parchment readings by local horror authors. It was gruesome … Here’s a taster of the taster: In the layers furthest from the sun, the skeletons of old, strange animals swam, their giant forms …

 

April 18 2019

My short story “Animalia Paradoxa” was featured as the “weekend read” by For Books’ Sake, a site that champions writing by women. This is the title story of my new collection from Boiler House Books, which can be purchased here. A virus inflames a woman with mortal desire; a colonial naturalist seeks an impossible specimen; …

 

April 9 2019

My new collection of short stories, Animalia Paradoxa, is out now from Norwich-based Boiler House Press, as part of their exciting first fiction offering: great new books from Ben Borek, Ruby Cowling and Jonathan Gibbs complete the beautifully designed set. Buy them now direct from Boiler House ( international shipping available). The stories have never …

 

September 19 2018

My story “Promenade” is included in this Cambridge University Press schools anthology, which I certainly wouldn’t have minded having at school. It’s a very nice eclectic selection: The anthology contains short stories written in English by authors from many different countries and cultures, including Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Christina Rossetti, Janet Frame, Jhumpa Lahiri, Romesh …

 

September 7 2018

You can now read my Safari Gothic short story ‘Sanctuary’, and a huge trove of other downloadable e-books of all kinds, for free on your phone on the SimplyE app. It’s provided by the The New York Public Library, but you don’t need to be a library member, or in the States, to access it. (Use …

 

August 28 2018

An interview – from several months ago now – with The Booktrail, on my home town and my novels. 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 […]

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August 28 2018

An interview – from several months ago now – with The Booktrail, on my home town and my novels. 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 […]

 

August 7 2018

News! I’m really happy to announce a film deal for my novel Nineveh, with the fabulous Fortune Cookie Theatre Company. More details to follow in time, but I can say they have some brilliant ideas for bringing the bugs to life.

 

July 26 2018

I wrote a mini blogpost in the run-up to the Caine Prize for African Writing. There were 133 writers there on my carpet, and maybe five times as many others who’d helped them, in small or large ways, to be there. Read the full post here.

 

July 3 2018

With the fabulous The Caine Prize for African Writing winner. Congratulations for her wonderful story “Fanta Blackcurrant”.

 

June 6 2018

“Concrete fragments”: an interview. I did this interview some time ago with the excellent Graham Riach; happy to see it in print now. Read the whole piece here. In this interview, Henrietta Rose-Innes describes her practice as a short story writer, noting how it differs from that of writing novels or poetry. For Rose-Innes, the short story offers a way …

 

May 15 2018

CONGRATULATIONS Wole Talabi, Nonyelum Ekwempu, Olufunke Ogundimu Stacy Hardy and Makena Onjerika! I’m very proud to have been part of selecting this wonderful shortlist. Sifting through the entries was a pleasure from start to finish. Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa representing. Read the luminous top five stories here.

 

April 19 2018

Aw, I’m really pleased about this! delighted that my Twitter experiment @FarMonolith caught some nominators’ eyes. And fabulous company on the shortlists: yay Nerine Dorman Masha du Toit Deji Olukotun Sibongile Fisher and everyone else. Also, so nice that they include the longlists of all nominees. Some great stuff on there. As someone who’s been reading a lot of African …

 

April 14 2018

Nice surprise: my story “Porcelain” is included in ONE, a staged adaption of stories from ONE WORLD: A GLOBAL ANTHOLOGY OF SHORT STORIES by students at Santa Ana College, being performed this weekend. Go check it out.  ONE WORLD is one of the best publications I’ve been involved in; still robustly in print after 9 years, …

 

April 14 2018

Good to see the Franschhoek Literary Festival 2018 programme is up and running, with tickets on sale from tomorrow. Three days, nearly 200 authors. I’ll be there with 3 events: Fri 18 May, 10am, “What it takes to fill a page”: Darrel Bristow-Bovey will be chatting to me, Mick Herron and Claire Robertson. Sat 19, 6pm, “It’s not about me”: …

 

April 8 2018

Berliners! I’ll be on a panel to talk about “The Renaissance of the Short Story” on 27 April, as part of Writing in Migration, Berlin’s first African book festival. More details on at http://www.interkontinental.org/wim/

 

April 7 2018

ElNathan’s #BOAT at Literaturhaus Berlin. Pleased to be chatting to my friend and novelist Elnathan John about my writing on 25 April in Berlin. For details see here.

 

April 1 2018

Excellent round-up of last year’s African Science Fiction & Fantasy publications – thank you once again Geoff Ryman of the African Speculative Fiction Society. Looking forward to seeing which works published last year make the Nommos shortlists, which I imagine will be out soon … Read the full article here. 2017 was a year of small watersheds and consolida­tions, rather …

March 5 2018

Cool! Thanks BookBlast limited writing agency for putting Green Lion on this great list of cold-weather reads. Another kind of moral responsibility to that which we are used to receiving from South African writers, namely that of understanding how we engage with the creatures who share our planet. Read the full  round-up here.

 

February 23 2018

Nineveh: 'dense but hypnotic'. A nice, unexpected little Nineveh review on the blog Everywhere but Nowhere: The writing in Nineveh is hypnotic, the way the author crafts her words to bring the setting and characters to life is fantastic. The way she builds up the detail, describing everything as if she was painting a picture, precise and with layers, it was […]

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December 29 2017

I’m delighted to see Nineveh on So New | Necessary Fiction‘s excellent, eclectic end-of-year reading list – pleasingly thrown into the mix with some wonderful books that “show the scale of a life in the sweep of the wilder world.” Read the full list here.

December 21 2017

Back in 2011, I contributed to Louis Greenberg’s anthology, Home Away: 24 hours, 24 cities, now an out-of-print gem of South African writing. My hour was melancholy 5pm, of course; and my city was the ancient ruined Peruvian city of Chan Chan. You can read my short meditation on the city here: Chan-Chan-at-close-of-day-2. (I’m also particularly fond of […]

December 17 2017

Look! Amazing line-up of African writers for Berlin’s new InterKontinental Book Festival, 26-28 April 2018. delighted to be joining Niq Mhlongo, Zukiswa Wanner, Pumla Dineo Gqola and many other friends. The theme is “Writing in Migration”, it’s curated by German-Nigerian author Olumide Popoola, and it’s Berlin’s first dedicated African writing festival. Berlin friends – I’ll also be in conversation […]

 

December 14 2017

It’s a great honour and pleasure to be part of The Caine Prize for African Writing judging panel next year, alongside these wonderful writers and thinkers. Really looking forward to reading a new crop of brilliant stories.

 

December 6 2017

I’m really happy to be in this month’s Johannesburg Review of Books, the brilliant December fiction issue. They’ve scored some wonderful writers and I’m proud to be included. I’m also so pleased to have the opportunity to share this Twitter project, which is a new departure for me. Begin again. This morning, fires in the […]

November 28 2017

Thank you to Lauri Kuibitsile for this very kind Green Lion review. My first from Botswana! Truth, human truth, even this difficult, should be the goal of every novelist. Making it pretty for the reader is a trick most readers will resent. Rose-Innes never stoops to that. Green Lion is a commentary on the complex […]

 

November 24 2017
I’m very happy to be back this weekend at Akademie Schloss Solitude, where I was a literature fellow in 2007/8, taking part in a symposium on “Biographies and the Production of Places”. Looking forward particularly to Ivan Vladislavic’s keynote address later this evening.  

November 24 2017
I’m very pleased to be included in an expansive survey of Cape Town-based spec-fic – Cape Town: The Writers – alongside Diane Awerbuck, Lauren Beukes, Imraan Coovadia, Panashe Chigumadzi, Mandisi Nkomo, Mia Arderne, Ziphozakhe Hlobo, Nicholas Ernest, Toby Bennett, Zinaid Meeran Novelist & others. Part of the outstanding series, 100 African writers of SFF by Geoff Ryman […]

November 3 2017
Reviewer Sue Broom has put up a lovely thoughtful assessment of Green Lion on Nudge-book.com: Her portrayal of the sheer physicality of the lioness is sublime … The wilderness within the fence takes on a mystique of menace and there are some beautiful descriptions of its landscape. A recurring image throughout is gold – rare and […]

 

October 18 2017
I wrote a piece about my writerly relationship with my home town, Cape Town, for the excellent books and writing blog The Literary Sofa: To tourists, Table Mountain seems incongruous, wondrous; to locals, it’s a landmark and a compass point, even for those of us who live so far from the centre that the “tabletop” […]

October 16 2017
Tonight (16 Oct) I’ll be discussing “Writing Africa’s Futures: Fantasy Africa or Fantastical Africa” with Nigerian writer Chikodili Emelumadu, shortlisted for The Caine Prize, at Durning Library.

 

October 15 2017
Here’s a lovely, wide-ranging, thoughtful review from BookBlast for Green Lion: Individual vs. family, rich vs. poor, man vs. wild animal, conservation vs. extinction: Henrietta Rose-Innes’ multi-layered narrative addresses all these contradictions skilfully and with lightness of touch. Green Lion speaks to us urgently of another kind of moral responsibility to that which we are […]

October 14 2017
Book and Brew reviewer Jasmin Kirkbride gives Nineveh a strong recommendation in a new review: From the outset, Nineveh is characterised by vibrant insectoid imagery: the opening chapter focuses on a tree that has been colonised by caterpillars, for example. In the hands of any other author, such a motif might make your skin crawl, […]

 

October 12 2017
I had fun going through these questions for BookBlast’s “Author of the Week” feature. With salutes to The Johannesburg Review of Books, Civitella Ranieri, the hometown writing community and all my lovely publishers. Your views on success? Whatever you achieve, you look up to find the real prize has scuttled a little further out of […]

October 5 2017
I wrote a little list for the Guardian’s “Top Ten Books” feature, delving into some of my favourite writing about how we interact with the animals with which we share the world. Featuring Ursula K. Le Guin, James Herriot, Karen Joy Fowler, Russell Hoban and others. Our interactions with animals are many and various, ranging from […]

September 27 2017
Delighted to see Green Lion lounging on the Literary Sofa in this list of Autumnal reading suggestions. “Raises vital issues about our relationship with the natural world … above all an immersive and compelling story. Great characters, superb lyrical writing and a particular treat for anyone who knows Cape Town.”

September 25 2017
Green Lion has made it onto Book Blast’s intriguing Top 10 Reads for Independent Minds for September, taking the “Environmentalism and the New World” slot on this list of “deliciously eclectic, mind-altering reads to see us into the Autumn”.  

September 25 2017
Some photos from the magnificent launch for the UK edition of Green Lion at Belgravia Books on 5th September. A fine time was had, and lion chocolates were savagely consumed. Thank you Aardvark Bureau! Photos: Bethan James

London reminder: Green Lion launches next week!

August 30 2017
Dearest Londoners! I’m launching my novel Green Lion on 5th August, and I’d love you to come. RSVP as below to Belgravia Books.

Ten things you always wanted to know about me …

 

August 21 2017
To mark the publication week of the UK edition of Green Lion, Female First UK has published a little list of the “10 Things I’d Like My Readers To Know About Me” – it was fun to write!

 

August 21 2017
The first significant review of Green Lion in the UK is out, with a very gratifying five stars from the Telegraph (Sat 19 Aug). Lara Feigel writes: If there is an inner lion in us all, as Rose-Innes seems to suggest , her prose – weaving between muscular and lyrical – is well-equipped to capture […]

 

August 16 2017
Next week, I will be taking part in the Amnesty International Imprisoned Writers Series at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. I have the great honour of reading from Anna Politkovskaya’s book Putin’s Russia. Journalist and human rights activist, Politkovsaya was a fearless opponent of the Russian president. She was assassinated in 2006, the day she was […]

 

August 9 2017
I’ll be launching the UK edition of Green Lion at the always-wonderful Edinburgh International Book Fair. I’ll be there in the week of the 20 Aug, and have several appearances lined up: Mon 21 Aug, 17.30 – 18.15: Amnesty International Imprisoned Writers Series. Dangerous Dispatches: Henrietta with Deni Ellis Béchard and Tom Feiling, reading works from […]

 

August 3 2017
My publishers Aardvark Bureau and Gallic Books are giving away ten copies of my novel Green Lion, about to be released in the UK. Enter on Goodreads – giveaway ends Aug 19.

 

August 1 2017
The fun, freewheeling, democratic and fiercely contested alternative to the Booker Prize, the Guardian’s annual “Not the Booker” prize, is open for voting, with a gigantic long list of 150 books. Green Lion is one of them. If you’ve read and enjoyed my novel, please do consider giving it a vote – it would be […]

July 29 2017
I wrote a little piece for the TLS website, about the big changes in South African literature since I first dipped my toes in it. A personal view. The past twenty years have been an interesting time to come of age as a novelist in South Africa. In 1994, there were many confident predictions that […]

 

July 29 2017
My story “The Second Law” is now *free* to read on the Galley Beggar Press website. Yet again I demonstrate my precog powers, as this story clearly predicts the fidget spinner. I should get paid more for this stuff. More stories from last year’s Galley Beggar Prize longlist are all online on the excellent site, as […]

 

July 29 2017
Here’s a lovely piece in praise of caterpillars from Patrick Barkham in the Guardian – with a nod to Nineveh, noting the “welcome appearance for that rare species, the humane pest controller”. I’d forgotten what fabulous pets they are: busy, and oddly personable. The forest school class loved having caterpillars trotting up their arms, and solicitously […]

 

July 29 2017
The first UK review of Green Lion came out a little while ago on The Bookbag. The verdict? “This is not necessarily a likeable book, but it’s certainly not a forgettable one.” – what more could you ask for? Rose-Innes’ animals have a liquid quality, slipping between boundaries, often unseen but felt or heard, frequently doing […]

May 20 2017
I recently did a little piece for British Airways’ High Life inflight magazine for their “Hometown” series – about the elusive caracals on Table Mountain, and writing about home while far away, and how a rooikat popped up in my novel Green Lion (out in the UK in August). It’s kind of fluffy (furry?) but I like it. […]

May 6 2017
I did a little Q&A about my novel Green Lion, which is coming out in the UK in August from Aardvark Bureau / Gallic Books. … as humans grow estranged from the natural world and as we lose more and more wild species, we seem increasingly to mythologise nature. We value the images of animals and […]

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April 15 2017
The Greenwich Book Festival programme is out and tickets are available for sale. I’ll be taking part in the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize event on the evening of 27 May: Readings from the longlisted, shortlisted and winning authors of the 2016/17 award, as well as a panel event hosted by the Guardian Books journalist Chris Power. […]

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April 13 2017
Nineveh is included in a fascinating list of five recent international novels dealing with “City-Dwellers Under Stress … urban disquiet and the evolving tensions of 21st century city living” (along with Ge Fei’s The Invisibility Cloak, Kelly Luce’s Pull Me Under, Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People). Of Nineveh, Tobias Carroll writes: “Rose-Innes does a fantastic job of […]

 

April 13, 2017
I was very happy to see Nineveh reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement. “A churning hive, everyone a termite, all borders and boundaries eaten through … the novel has a powerful ecological strand.” Link here (paywalled).

April 6 2017
If you’re in Norwich on April 10, I’ll be reading from Nineveh and my forthcoming novel Green Lion at the excellent Cafe Writers, alongside award-winning poet Elisabeth Sennitt Clough. Join us at 7pm at Take 5, 17 Tombland. Admission £2, and there’ll be an open mic. Facebook invitation and more information here.
 

March 20 2017
“Strange, uncanny, and downright criminal” – if this sounds appealing and you’re in London on 28th March, come along to “Mysteries Overseas: An Evening with Acclaimed International Women Writers“. I’ll be there with authors Johana Gustawsson (France), Andrée A. Michaud (Canada) and Teresa Solana (Spain), chatting about our work. Q: What could be finer than spending an evening […]
 

March 6 2017

I’m very pleased to be speaking at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) this coming Friday 10 March as part of the prestigious Conversations in Bloomsbury series. I’ll be in conversation with Zimbabwean writer and musician, Brian Chikwava, talking about my novel Nineveh. “This story, set in Cape Town explores the tensions between the natural and man-made […]
 

February 16 2017
I recently did an interview with Michael Barron of transnational arts and culture website the Culture Trip. I talk about Nineveh, the state of South African literature, and writing in a foreign land. Up to now, I’ve always been focused on writing about specific landscapes that I know very well – Cape Town, basically. But since moving, I’ve […]
 

February 9 2017
Lovely words for L’Homme au lion (French edition of Green Lion) from the Charybde blog: Henrietta Rose-Innes makes the city of Cape Town an essential figure, inhabited by the echoes of the past and magnetized by Table Mountain, where rocks, thorns and memories intertwine … a luminous narrative … enhanced by the magnetic descriptions of place, […]
 

February 3 2017

I’m delighted to report that my novel Green Lion will be coming out in the UK in Aug from the wonderful Gallic Books / Aardvark Bureau. We’ve kept the original SA Umuzi cover, with a few small tweaks from designer Russell Stark (publicide), because it’s perfect. Excited to have it out in time to take to the […]
 

January 26 2017
I’m delighted to say that my short story “The Second Law” has been longlisted for the Galley Beggar short story prize. There are 13 great stories on the list, and they can all be downloaded, for a pound each, as singles from the Galley Beggar website – mine is here. The site also carries brief interviews with me […]
 

December16 2016
L’Homme au lion (Green Lion, out in French from Editions Zoé) has been warmly reviewed in Le Monde. Read the full review here Between frenzy and savagery, the great South African city is at the heart of the new novel by Henrietta Rose-Innes … Of a rare magnetism, new proof that Henrietta Rose-Innes is today one […]
 

December 14 2016
A year after its publication in Mexico, La Jornada Seminal reports that Nínive (the beautiful Spanish-language edition of Nineveh from Editorial Almadía) is “a novel that deserves the fervent praise of JM Coetzee”: Rose-Innes is a teacher in the art of constructing not only credible but endearing characters, who we long to meet again after a break in reading … […]
 

December 14 2016
Here’s a lovely review of Hep Eve (the Turkish edition of my story collection Homing, from publisher Yüz Kitap): “A book that reminds people why they love stories. It’s like a delicious candy that melts in the mouth … as if Henrietta Rose-Innes is addressing a sense we have not discovered yet.” The whole review (in […]
 

December 12 2016
The Chicago Review of Books calls Nineveh “a remarkable inquiry into humanity’s ongoing relationship with nature.” Innes provides every detail of both human and natural architecture with impeccable precision. This attention to the physical world informs Nineveh’s well-mapped structure and propels forward a refreshing narrative, rife with irascible insects and immovable greenery. Read the full review by […]

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December 12 2016

On Sunday 11th I spoke to Mariella Frostrup about Nineveh on BBC Radio 4’s “Open Book“. It’ll be broadcast again on Thu 15 Dec 2016, 15:30 – see link for more details, and to read the first chapter.
 

December 12 2016
The Irish Independent has published a thoughtful review of Nineveh, calling it “a kind of haunted-house novel that doubles as a state-of-the-nation narrative but without losing the laser-like focus of an intimate psychological thriller”. Nineveh packs a punch beyond its immediate context of post-apartheid South Africa … a shrewd narrative tease that invites you above all […]

 

December 7 2016
Aaron Bady has written a very thoughtful, unsettled and unsettling analysis of Nineveh on the New Inquiry blog: The prose seethes and shimmers with the uncanny and unsettled, a garden haunted by matter-out-of-place … Even though it isn’t, this novel feels like science fiction; it itches like the dystopian, the speculative, and the post-apocalyptic, even as it’s realistically set in […]

 

December 6 2016
“Urban alienation and contemporary satire converge in this haunting novel.” Very happy to see Nineveh included in this round-up of good reads for December from Vol. 1 Brooklyn, a website that “engages and connects the literary-minded from Brooklyn and beyond”!  

 

December 5 2016
Jared Shurin – of Pornokitsch, and until recently publisher at Jurassic London – has long been an enthusiastic supporter of Nineveh. Read his new review, written to mark the UK and US editions : A contemporary urban fantasy classic … creepy, crawly and a little bit chilling …Nineveh works excellently as a metaphor for gentrification and class structure, but, for me, the […]

 

December 2 2016
Emerald Street has published a lovely short review of Nineveh:

“In a part of the forest she doesn’t often visit…”- Nineveh extract
 

December 1 2016
Literary Hub (lithub.com) has published an extract from Nineveh  on their website. Read for free! It’s strange, what disgusts people. Who would scorn the friendship of gecko, for example: golden-eyed, translucent-skinned, toes splayed on a farmhouse wall? Who could resent a long-legged spider, knitting its silver in the corner of a room? But they do: people will […]

November 30 2016
In the wake of the US launch of Nineveh, Electric Literature has run a interview with me, with this lovely intro: Nineveh is one of the coolest novels I’ve read in years. I don’t know how else to say it. The ancient ruin of the title is a luxury housing project outside Cape Town that’s […]

 

November 15 2016
I’m very happy to be be appearing at Kramerbooks in Washington DC tomorrow night, 16th Nov, alongside my fellow Unnamed Press author Fabienne Josaphat. We’ll be reading from our novels, Nineveh and The Baron’s Shadow, and chatting about our work. Join us if you’re in the neighbourhood. Facebook invitation here. Fabienne Josaphat’s electric prose in […]

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November 14 2016
In a short review for The Guardian, Emily Rhodes calls Nineveh “surprisingly griping”: 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” … as the wealthy emphatically assert boundaries the author shows to be futile. Her pests are persistent and ultimately powerful – […]

 

November 7 2016
The Chicago Review of Books has named Nineveh, out now in the States from Unnamed Press, one of their “ten best new books to read this November”. Read the whole list here: exciting titles, including new books by Anne Rice and Zadie Smith.  

“Nineveh” tours the States: Nov dates

 

November 5 2016
In November, I’m very excited to be touring the States with the US edition of Nineveh from Unnamed Press, talking at various bookstores. All very welcome!     Nov 11: Ithaca, NY: 5:15 PM at Handwerker Gallery, Ithaca College. (Flyer above) Nov 14: Baltimore, MD: 7:00 PM at The Ivy Bookshop; Facebook invitation here. Nov 16: Washington, D.C.: 6:30 […]
 

November 5 2016
I’m delighted to announce that my collection of short stories, Homing, is now published in Turkish by Yüz Kitap as HEP EVE – I just adore the fresh and witty cover they’ve made for it. Güney Afrika’nın en önemli seslerinden Henrietta-Rose Innes bu incelikli ve tam kararında yazılmış öykülerde bizlere bir dizi sıradan hayata sıra dışı bir bakış atma imkânı sunuyor … Cape Town’da […]

October 26 2016
With the first US edition of Nineveh appearing in the States in November, I’m happy to report that it’s been welcomed so far, with thoughtful reviews in Kirkus Reviews: “A nimble, intriguing novel … A persuasive, witty exploration of a tough and unconventional young woman – and a consistently lively account of the entanglements of cultural politics, class, […]

Knee-high to a beetle

October 9 2016
When you’re a kid and close to the ground, you have a natural affinity with the smallest creatures, the tiny strivers that tunnel their way through the foundations of the world. I was always poking into spaces between grassroots and bricks, charmed to find them occupied by mantises, ants, grass-snakes and assorted goggas. Once, I watched a swarm of […]

 

October 6 2016
I had a wonderful time travelling to Switzerland and France in September to launch L’Homme au lions (Editions Zoe). I was met by several warm reviews in the Swiss press: Henrietta Rose-Innes crystallises the fears and projections the big cats arouse … if “L’Homme au lion” has a metaphorical character, there are also complex and vivid characters. – Le […]

September 23 2016
I’ll be in the town of Chaux-de-Fonds on Saturday 24th Sept at 12 noon to read and talk about “L’Homme au lion” at Librairie La Méridienne, who are celebrating their 20th anniversary with a weekend of activities, including readings, literary talks, comedy, art and musical performances.

 

September 6 2016
The first Geneva launch of L’HOMME AU LION (Green Lion), the beautiful French edition from Editions Zoe, will take place on 16 Sep, Librairie du Boulevard, at 6pm. All welcome. Further Paris and Geneva dates to be announced soon.

“Haunting, sensual” L’Homme au Lion in bookshops now
 

September 1 2016
L’HOMME AU LION – the French edition of Green Lion, from Editions Zoé, translated by the wonderful Elisabeth Gilles – is in bookshops today. Here’s a brief early review by Anne-Sylvie Sprenger, Payot/L’Hebdo (to the best of my and Google Translate’s ability): With a haunting pen, the South African author pulls us into this fable which tries to penetrate the close […]

August 31 2016
If you’re near London on 20 October, 7pm: come to the launch of the terminal publication from spec-fic press Jurassic London, where the marvellous Jared Shurin and Anne Perry have given so many writers invaluable breaks and boosts, and put us in such gorgeous books. The FB invitation is here. Read more about the collection & […]

 

August 30 2016
Delighted to present the full jacket of the UK edition of Nineveh, due out in Nov from Aardvark Bureau. They run over her knuckles. Their carapaces glitter purple, green and gold. Thousands of them. She examines one on the back of her hand. It waves its jointed feelers wildly in her direction, semaphoring something: insectoid […]

 

August 12 2016
For the UK edition of NINEVEH, due out from Aardvark Bureau in November, superb design company publicide has produced yet another thing of beauty. Patrick Gale says: “I love Henrietta Rose-Innes’ work. With plotlines that are wittily subversive and language that is whippet-lean, it is long overdue for discovery by a wider readership.” The design […]

July 29 2016
For fun, in the run-up to the UK/US publication of Nineveh (Nov) and the UK publication of Green Lion (March next year), I’ve put together some Pinterest boards. I’ll be adding images that inspired me in the writing of the books, or that resonate with their content and atmosphere. Hope you enjoy.    

July 12 2016
I recently gave an interview on South African radio station Classic FM about my novel Green Lion, and read an extract. You can listen to it here.

June 28 2016
I’m extremely happy to announce that two of my novels will soon be published in the UK. The innovative publisher Aardvark Bureau will bring out Nineveh this year and Green Lion in 2017, which means that the books will finally be available to British & Commonwealth readers. Nineveh will be published simultaneously in November 2016 by Unnamed Press […]

June 13 2016
In the run-up to the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize, the Sunday Times (SA) has published an extract from Green Lion, and I briefly discuss the “spark” that brought the novel into being. Green Lion was written at a time when I was very preoccupied, because of family circumstances, with ageing, mortality and the attempt to rescue what […]

June 10 2016
It’s here: the beautiful new French editions of my novel Green Lion – L’Homme au Lion – from the wonderful Editions Zoe (who published Ninive in 2014). Another immaculate translation from Elisabeth Gilles, and great, fresh cover, featuring an ink drawing by Rembrandt of an actual 17th-century extinct Cape Lion – the same breed as the novel’s elusive […]

June 9 2016
Graham Riach has written a thoughtful and empathetic review of my novel Green Lion for the Africa in Words blog. You feel the shifting textures … and hear with Con the whistling of adrenaline in your ears. Rose-Innes makes us not only see, but feel the atavistic terror of the scene, bringing us as readers back to our embodied animal […]

June 8 2016
On June 9th I’ll be taking part in HIDE – a site-specific performance in beautiful RSPB reserve Strumpshaw Fen in the Broads, Norwich. Along with a talented group of UEA poets, novelists, playwrights and actors, we’ll present a somewhat different tour of Strumpshaw – stories, scenes and sights all inspired by the reserve, its ebbs and flows […]

May 19 2016
My short story ‘Porcelain’, from my 2010 collection Homing, is featured in this month’s Woman & Home magazine (South Africa). The great news is that they plan to print more local fiction as a regular feature.

May 16 2016
Green Lion has made it onto the shortlist for the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize, the fiction component of the Sunday Times Literary Awards, South Africa’s foremost literary accolade. The shortlist was announced recently at the Franschhoek Literary Festival, and the winner will be announced at an event in Johannesburg on 25 June, 2016. The full list of shortlisted books is: Boy on the Wire by […]

Interview: La Palabra y el Hombre

April 24 2016
The new issue of Mexican cultural magazine La Palabra y el Hombre is out now, featuring a long interview between me and Javier Ahumada Aguirre about my novel Nineveh (published as Nínive by Editorial Almadía) and South African writing in general. The interview took place last year in the beautiful town of Xalapa, during the Mexican launch […]

April 18 2016
If you’re in Norwich this Thurs eve, do come along to this. I’m one of the readers at the UEA Live event, supporting the headliner Juliet Jacques. Juliet is a freelance writer and critic, best known for the Guardian’s “Transgender Journey”—the first time the gender reassignment process had been serialised for a major British publication … […]

No insect in the road – Nínive reviewed in Nexos.

April 10 2016
The Spanish translation of Nineveh, published as Nínive in Mexico last year by Editorial Almadía, has received a lovely review by Héctor Iván González for Nexos Magazine: Entre los nuevos autores sudafricanos que la editorial Almadía ha acercado al público en español, Henrietta Rose-Innes (1971) es una de las más jóvenes y más refrescantes. Así lo sugiere su […]

Green Lion longlisted for Barry Ronge Prize

April 6 2016
Green Lion is one of 25 novels longlisted for the 2016 Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize, South Africa’s preeminent fiction award. Worth R100 000 to the winner, it is given each year to recognise “a novel of rare imagination and style, evocative, textured and a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction”. Last year the […]

March 21 2016
  Seeing your book’s cover for the first time can be a fraught moment for an author, but I’ve been really fortunate: I’ve had wonderfully skilled designers working on my books. I’m especially happy about my small but growing collection of Nineveh editions from different corners of the world. Each of these great designs is offbeat, eerie, playful, enigmatic – perfect for a tale of family dysfunction […]

March 15 2016
I’m thrilled to bits that my novel Nineveh will be available to American readers at last, with a new edition due this year from LA-based Unnamed Press: We are thrilled to be publishing Henrietta Rose-Innes in the United States and the novel NINEVEH in particular. Rose-Innes has the remarkable ability to create worlds that are lush, […]

March 10 2016
So here’s a crazy story from the BBC – “Stuffed animals worth £100k stolen from Wandsworth warehouse“: A chimpanzee wearing a top hat, a lion and a zebra are some of the stuffed animals worth £100,000 that have been stolen from a south London warehouse. This warehouse is the same strange and amazing place I visited […]
 

February 5 2016
A post about lions, saints, serendipity, London, scale models, art, insomnia and my novel Green Lion.   Antonello da Messina, Saint Jerome in his Study, c. 1475. I’ve always loved this painting, with the shy little lion in the background – it was one of the inspirations for Green Lion. I saw it at the […]

November 16 2015
Charl Blignaut has given my novel Green Lion a lovely review in City Press. The grand spectacle of extinction plays out in the fierce and compassionate fourth novel from Henrietta Rose-Innes … It’s the ability of Rose-Innes to plot a narrative with textured characters – with emotions, smells, stubborn streaks – that will keep you turning […]

October 12 2015
I recently took part in one of the regular Sunday-morning “pyjama interviews” over at The Good Book Appreciation Society Facebook group. I had the pleasure of interviewing author Helen Macdonald about her runaway bestseller, H is for Hawk. Our chat was wide-ranging and Helen is passionate and entertaining. You can read the first part of the interview here; […]

October 6 2015
In a recent piece for n+1 magazine, Jeanne-Marie Jackson in on fine form, dissecting the possibilities of a South African “novel of ideas”. I am most fortunate to have my book Green Lion read so cogently alongside Imraan Coovadia’s excellent Tales of the Metric System. Surely there should be room, in the present surge of interest in African writing, […]

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October 2 2015
A  review of Green Lion by the inimitable Ashraf Jamal in Business Day. So grateful for the profoundly sympathetic and thoughtful reading. “It is the mortal coil that enfolds all of us which Rose-Innes conveys with breathtakingly incisive and evocative prose … It is the strange mix of violence and tenderness which gives Rose-Innes’s novel its great power … Green Lion […]
 

October 2 2015
A while ago, I had to seek permission to use the cover image from a 1971 science-fiction story collection (to illustrate an essay of mine on JG Ballard*). It was quite hard to track down the home address of the artist, Davis Meltzer, now 85 and long out of the public eye, but I did, […]
 

September 30 2015
For International Translation Day / St Jerome’s Feast Day, BooksLive have done an interesting round-up of recent South African books in translation, including a nod to Nineveh’s French and Spanish incarnations. South African authors are in high demand overseas, especially in Europe but also increasingly in China and Japan. Read the full post here.

 

September 28 2015
In conversation with the wonderful writer Leila Aboulela, deftly facilitated by editor/critic Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, at the Small Wonder Short Story Festival at Charleston this last weekend. We discussed the impact the Caine Prize for African Writing has had on each of our writing lives, and our latest novels. A pleasure to engage with such fine speakers and thinkers. 

 

September 25, 2015
“Entren, entren, infesten, invadan denme, una razon para estar aqui!” I’m thrilled to reveal the cover for the new Spanish-language edition of my novel Niniveh (Ninive). Publisher Almadia have done a spectacular job, producing something unsettling, sweet and creep-crawlingly appealing. It shares a family resemblance with the South African cover but is also entirely its own thing. What’s fun about […]

 

September 21, 2015
This Saturday, 26 Sept, I’m very happy to be attending the Small Wonder Short Story Festival in Charleston (near Lewes, E Sussex). I’ll be discussing the the Caine Prize for African Writing with author Leila Aboulela in a discussion chaired by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey (editor, critic and Caine Prize board member). The Caine Prize, launched in […]

 

September 20 2015
Yesterday we had our first rehearsal for a 4-day reading of the unabridged Moby-Dick, which takes place at the Southbank Centre, London, on Oct 1-4. There’s an enormous crew of readers (including some amazing writers), salty dogs and new recruits, press-ganged by The Special Relationship (“the polymath of literary evenings”). Check ‪#‎mobydicklive‬ on twitter for updates, whale pix, […]

 

September 18 2015
Some photos of our Goethe-Institut Johannesburg event on 15 September, part of their Literary Crossroads series. I’m with Angela Makholwa, chatting about “Nature and the Imagination in fiction” … and everything in between. A handsome audience! Pics courtesy of the Goethe Institut. Literary Crossroads is a new series of talks where South African writers meet colleagues from […]

 

September 8 2015
Tomorrow evening at Open Book Cape Town I have the pleasure of being on a panel with two of the most brilliant writers and delightful people that I know: 4 Years On: Patrick Gale, Neel Mukherjee and Henrietta Rose-Innes were all at Open Book 1. Mervyn Sloman prods their memories and talks then and now. 09/09/2015, Fugard […]

Talking “Nature and Imagination” at the Goethe Institute, 15 Sept
 

September 6 2015
On 15th Sept, together with writer Angela Makholwa, I will be taking part in a reading and discussion on “Nature and Imagination” in Johannesburg at the Goethe-Institut. This is part of their Literary Crossroads series of talks, where “South African writers meet colleagues from all over the continents and from the African diaspora to discuss trends, topics and themes prevalent in their […]

Nineveh goes to Mexico in Spanish edition
 

September 3 2015
I am really, truly excited about this development: my novel Nineveh is coming out in Spanish translation soon with my fantastic Mexican publisher Almadia, and I’ll be launching it at the Oaxaca International Book Fair in October. More details soon …

What I’m up to at Open Book, 9-13 Sept
 

September 1 2015
Next week, alongside many exciting international and local writers, I’ll be taking part in several events at the always great Open Book literary festival in central Cape Town: 9th Sept, 6pm: 4 years on. Patrick Gale, Neel Mukherjee and Henrietta Rose-Innes were all at Open Book 1. Mervyn Sloman prods their memories and talks then and now. 9th Sept, 9.30pm: Stray readings. An evening of readings […]

womenwriters readwomen: Green Lion edition

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August 31 2015
“Compelling, tightly written page-turner peopled by characters I believe in”. Kind words for Green Lion from writer Joanne Hichens. Read the whole post here, and have a look at the rest of August’s useful ‪#‎readwomen‬ ‪#‎womenwriters posts on Books Live: women writers recommending books by women.
 

August 27 2015
Books LIVE has done a nice write-up of the recent Cambridge conference Writing South Africa Now, where I had the privilege of reading alongside the esteemed biographer Lyndall Gordon. Literary scholars, poets, performers and writers … created a critically-engaged and supportive atmosphere in which ideas could be tested and new ways of thinking about South African literature […]
 

August 18 2015
“Older books [that you’ve written] are like past relationships; you need to commit to the one you’re with.” I recently had a wide-ranging interview with You Magazine, discussing my novel Green Lion. Read the full interview and a short review here.
 

August 14 2015
A short Green Lion review in You Magazine. There is also an interview with me in the magazine, but it seems to be locked for viewing for the moment … This brilliant novel explores the animal instinct in human nature, the battle between chaos and order and the effects of the past on the present […]

August 13 2015
Read an excerpt from my novel Green Lion, involving an erotic encounter in the zoo … “The evening had taken on a velvet density. Together they walked down the pale path, past the sign of the golden lion. No guard at night, with the staff cuts. He closed his hand around the keys in his pocket, heavy […]
 

August 13 2015
Listen to a reading and discussion between myself, Segun Afolabi, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Caine Prize Director Dr Lizzy Attree and editor Ellah Allfrey. Recorded at the recent London Short Story Festival. I read from my novel Green Lion. The Caine Prize celebrates writers from anywhere in Africa for work published in English. Its focus is on the […]
 

August 8 2015
I was at the Mail and Guardian Literature Festival this last weekend. Here, Fest director and books editor Darryl Accone rounds up some of the soundbites: Two days and eight sessions of fluency, knowledge, wit, barbs, bitterness, wisdom, anger, humour, theory, emotion, high academe, celebration, gloom, lived experience and words … on subjects ranging from decolonising culture […]

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August 3 2015
On stage in Johannesburg at the Mail and Guardian Literary Festival / Book Fair, discussing the state of the South African novel and literary awards with an all-star line-up of writers: Leon de Kock, Mandla Langa, Niq Mhlongo, Damon Galgut and Ivan Vladislavic. .
 

July 28 2015

My Green Lion gets a nice pat on the head in this overview of the upcoming Mail and Guardian Literary Festival / South African Book Fair by books editor and director of the Festival, Darryl Accone: ‘In her latest novel, Green Lion …Rose-Innes evokes the bronze lions of the Rhodes Memorial at several points: precisely, playfully […]
 

July 28 2015
The Mail & Guardian Literary Festival, in conjunction with the South African Book Fair, is happening this weekend in Johannesburg. The programme looks great, and I’m very much looking forward to Sunday’s panel, The South African Novel at 21: (Leon de Kock discusses with novelists Damon Galgut, Mandla Langa, Niq Mhlongo, Henrietta Rose-Innes and Ivan […]
 

July 27 2015
If you’re not a member of The Good Book Appreciation Society but would like to read the interview I did on the site yesterday, Lisa Lazarus has kindly posted it on the Greg Lazarus blog. We had some fun with it. “In green Lion I wanted to examine the other side of our relationship with the […]
 

July 25 2015
This Sunday 26 July I have the pleasure of being grilled by friend and author Lisa Lazarus about my novel Green Lion. (5pm,South African time.) Join us on The Good Book Appreciation Facebook group if you’d like to listen and join in. It’s a closed group, so you need to friend Bea Reader on FB if […]
 

July 6 2015
Green Lion gets a mention in Darrel Bristow-Bovey’s latest evocative column about runaway wildlife: I was reading the novel with a view of the mountainside and I looked up from the page with a quiet thrill of pleasure. Just the thought of Sekhmet on the loose reanimates the mountain, retrieves it from something domesticated and […]
 

July 3 2015
Coming up beginning of August: The Mail and Guardian Litfest is partnering with the SA Book Fair, which for the first time is happening in Johannesburg. I’m looking forward to the discussion: on 2 Aug, I’ll be on a fantastic panel (with luminaries Niq Mhlongo, Ivan Vladislavic, Damon Galgut and Mandla Langa) on “SA Literature at 21”. […]
 

July 3 2015
I was recently interviewed by Sue Grant-Marshall, on “Reading Matters”, about my novel Green Lion. Listen to the podcast here. It’s a story about an escaped lion on the slopes of Table Mountain, but much more than that, it is about freedom, power and loss, examining the borderline between human and animal.
 

July 2 2015
This is only happening in a few weeks’ time, but it should be fun: I’ll be chatting about Green Lion to friend and writer Lisa Lazarus on 26 July. In the meantime, The Good Book Appreciation Society is worth hooking up with – lots of material for book addicts. Find details of the event, and […]
 

July 2 2015
Squadrons of exciting South African and international writers will descend on Cape Town in September for the Open Book Cape Town festival. I’ll be there …
 

June 25 2015
Looking forward to the Writing South Africa Now colloquium in Cambridge, 26-27 June. I feel very privileged to be part of a reading and discussion with the eminent biographer Lyndall Gordon on the 26th; and will enjoy readings and talks by Kelwyn Sole, Rita Barnard, Malika Ndlovu, Isobel Dixon, Kate Kilalea, Graham K. Riach and […]
 

June 24 2015
The website Art-Movie-Book put up some great photos from the Green Lion launch at Love Books, Johannesburg, and a review. “Henrietta’s commentary on how society allegorises things, especially animals that are close to extinction and beyond human reach, brings some very strange scenes to the page …” Read the full review here.

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June 23 2015
Louise Ferreira reviews Green Lion for Die Burger newspaper (Afrikaans): Die karakters se hunkering na ’n diep verbintenis met ’n ander wese eggo ’n menslike desperaatheid om die natuur te behou, maar ook om iets groters as hulself aan te raak … Green Lion is ’n lieflike boek. (The characters’ longing for a deep connection with […]
 

June 22 2015
I had a studio chat with Michele Magwood recently about my novel Green Lion – I found the conversation really rewarding. “In this book, I wanted to examine what I see around me, which is modern human beings’ strange love affair with other creatures, non-human creatures,” she says. “It seems to me a poignant, sad […]
 

June 13 2015
“Rose-Innes has been a spectacular writer since her first novel, Shark’s Egg, and each of her subsequent works has been a finely wrought delight. She delivers again in Green Lion with startling and satisfying results.” – Jennifer Crocker
 

June 9 2015
Here’s a lovely write-up of the launch of Green Lion at the Book Lounge. Hedley Twidle from the University of Cape Town asked all the right questions: sensitive, historically aware and searching. And I apologise for “harrowing” the audience. 🙂 “A remarkable narrative … The all too painful reality of the rapid disappearance of species … was somewhat tempered by the relief […]

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June 1 2015
I did a lovely interview recently with Louise Ferreira for the books pages of Netwerk24. Read it here (in Afrikaans). “Ek is geïnteresseerd in daardie splinter van ervaring waar die werklike en die alledaagse ’n onheilspellende gevoel aanneem; iets wat nie fantasie is nie, maar ’n verwringing of verskerping van die werklike. Dit is die […]
 

June 1 2015
A fun little “travel” piece I did for airline magazine SA HIgh Times recently: exploring ancient hippie ruins.
 

May 31 2015
Big thanks to blogger Jen Thorpe for her brief but insightful review of my 2011 novel Nineveh on Readwomenwrite. “The end of a story is often referred to as a climax, and in Nineveh that word finally seems appropriate.” While you’re there, do browse through the other reviews on Jen’s fantastic blog, which documents her year-long project to read only African woman […]
 

May 31, 2015

I’m happy to say Green Lion is now available as an eBook – although unfortunately only in South / Southern Africa so far because of rights issues. You can download it for Kindle on Amazon (link below) or in ePub format here.
 

May 28, 2015
Big thanks to Lauren Smith of the great blog Violin in a Void (@Violin_InA_Void on twitter) for this review of the ‪Green Lion‬ launch at the excellent Book Lounge on Tues night: “Perhaps the beauty of the book itself can help me handle whatever lies in its pages.” Thank you also to the lovely Short […]
 

May 27 2015
After another great launch at the Book Lounge in Cape Town last night, I’m off to Johannesburg today to chat about Green Lion at the Love Books launch in Melville. I am very happy to be in conversation with the hugely talented author Kathryn White: looking forward to a sparkling convo about lions, taxidermy, alchemy, writing […]
 

May 22 2015
Sheer pleasure to chat to old friend, fine author and eloquent host Darrel Bristow-Bovey at the launch of Green Lion at Kalk Bay Books on 21st May. A wide-ranging, intimate and often hilarious discussion. Photo: Paige Nick.

 

May 21 2015

As I may possibly have mentioned once or twice, my new novel Green Lion has hit the shelves, with a launch this Thurs at Kalk Bay Books. (There will be further launches next week in town and Joburg.) I’ll be chatting to the estimable author Darrel Bristow-Bovey, so I can promise an evening of riotous entertainment and searing wit. […]

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May 20 2015

Green Lion will have its second Cape Town launch at the wonderful Book Lounge next week, 26 May. I’m looking forward to conversation with the excellent Hedley Twidle from the University of Cape Town: his deep insight into the book’s Cape Town context, with its intertwined natural and unnatural histories, will make for a richly rewarding discussion. […]
 

May 17 2015

A few photos from the Franschhoek Literary Festival 2015. (all pics: @BooksLIVESA) Discussing “How do African writers make their mark on the international market?” (Our considered conclusion: who the hell knows? We just write books.) With Harry Garuba and authors Ekow Duker and Masande Ntshanga. Talking about African literary prizes with Sunday Times books editor Ben Williams and authors […]
 

May 14 2015

The annual Franschhoek Literary Festival starts tomorrow and runs through till Sunday. I’l be taking part in a couple of events, the first being “Prizing African Writing“, about the phenomenon of literary prizes. I’m sharing the platform with some eminent prize-winning writers, and we’ll be steered by an outstanding chair: I predict the conversation will be […]

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May 11 2015

The first review is always nerve-wracking. I am so gratified by this appraisal of Green Lion by the always-excellent Hedley Twidle: generous, insightful, and with a deep understanding of context. All reviewed writers should be so fortunate. (Full version of the shortened version in the print Sunday Times ZA) “Henrietta Rose-Innes’s remarkable new novel [is] an eccentric, […]

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