Cape Fever

Set in a fictionalised version of 1920s Cape Town, Cape Fever traces protagonist Soraya Matas’s experience of finding herself entangled with the spirits of a decaying manor and the secrets of its enigmatic owner. This is Nadia Davids at her most exceptional. Cape Fever is utterly compelling and immersive, alive with sound, smell, colour and emotional clarity. The central character embodies both the burn of rage and the promise of an imagination that sits outside of the colonial grip. This novel brings to life the backstory of the Cape today, where the fever of systemic othering still runs hot. Slave and colonial cultures are sharply contrasted: the richly connected and alive realm of poverty sectioned off from the emptied out and soul-impoverished colonial class. The narrative moves seamlessly across time and scale and between the physical and spirit realms; from the infrastructure of a racialised history to the domestic scale of daily indignity, extraction, domination and manipulation. This is an astute masterpiece, offering us a redemptive heroine in a moment when the world needs her.