Henrietta Rose-Innes's Blog, page 12

UEA Live with Juliet Jacques

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 … most recent book, Trans: A Memoir was published last year by Verso … Olivia Laing had this to say about it: “Brave and moving, Trans is necessary reading for anyone who cares about gender, power, freedom and desire … A vital voice in our turbulent times.”

Plus an excellent line-up of other writers from the University of East Anglia’s creative writing programme: Ellena West, Clara Diniz, Fern Richards, Will Spiller, Hattie Lomax, Radha Smith, Jenni Watson, Sam Smith and Anna Metcalfe.

Thursday 21 April at 18:30

Writers’ Centre Norwich

Dragon Hall, King Street, NR3 1AE Norwich, Norfolk

Tickets

No insect in the road – Nínive reviewed in Nexos

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 novela Nínive, la cual está dotada de un toque de fantasía en su concepción, pero que no ha dejado de lado el tratamiento psicológico de los personajes … Katya es uno de los personajes femeninos más atractivos de la literatura contemporánea.

(Rough translation: Among the new South African authors Almadía has introduced to the Spanish public, Henrietta Rose-Innes (1971) is one of the youngest and most refreshing. This is suggested by her novel Nineveh, which is equipped with a touch of fantasy in its conception, but has not neglected the psychological treatment of the characters … Katya is one of the most attractive female characters in contemporary literature.)

The review singles out the translator, Ana Marimón Driven, for particular praise for the freshness, spontaneity and fluency of her translation.

Green Lion longlisted for Barry Ronge Prize

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 recipient was Damon Galgut for his novel Arctic Summer.

Chairperson of the judging committee, Rustum Kozain, remarks:

There are stories set in South Africa and set elsewhere … generally realist stories and there are science fiction or speculative fiction stories. Tender, lyrical narratives wistful and romantic, and narratives that come at you with the full blast of the digital-information age. There is seriousness and humour, light humour and black humour. South African writers are writing. It is a daunting field.

The shortlist will be revealed on May 14 at the Franschhoek Literary Festival. (My novel Nineveh was on the shortlist in 2012.)

Four ways of looking at a beetle

 

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 and real-estate catastrophe in a vermin-haunted swamp – yet distinct in mood and tone. You can see more work by each of these fine artists in the links below.

Adventurous LA-based publisher Unnamed Press recently revealed the cover for the  of Nineveh: this striking image from artist and in-house art director, Jaya Nicely. I love its menace and mystery. The looming building is a reference to the luxury housing development that gives the novel its name, and to bigger themes of urban growth and decay. I’m very much looking forward to introducing Nineveh to America in November.

A beautiful French-language Ninive appeared from Swiss publisher Editions Zoé in 2014. I was so pleased that artist Silvia Francia chose this image for her swampy, subtle cover – a doomed frog has a crucial cameo in the book. It’s lovely to know that a designer has read the book with care. I’m happy to add that in 2016 Editions Zoé will publish my novel Green Lion, translated once again by the excellent Elisabeth Gilles. (The South African cover for Green Lion is also a work of beauty.)

In 2015, I had the pleasure of seeing Nínive published by another fearless independent, Editorial Almadía (Mexico), in a Spanish translation by Ana Marimón Driben. Alejandro Magallanes is the artist behind the fabulous, clever covers on all of Almadía’s books. The combination of candy colour, humour and unease works brilliantly: the pink dust-jacket draws you in, before revealing the disturbingly sweet, ant-eyed butterfly-woman beneath.

This is the arresting original cover of the South African edition, published by Umuzi (Penguin Random House) in 2011. With its combination of boldness and detail, it captures the book’s ambivalence towards the creatures infesting it: suspicion, fascination, strange affection. The design is by Michiel Botha, one of the most talented and prolific South African book designers, who also did the airy, pigeon-adorned cover of my short-story collection Homing.

 

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Nineveh’s creepy-crawlies invade US

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 :

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, vivid, and endlessly fascinating, entire ecosystems and hidden communities that are buzzing with life. This is an absorbing, in every sense of the word, gothic novel for the 21st Century exploring both human relationships and the environment with grace and wit.

You can read the full announcement . I’ll be launching with a US tour in November, but in the meantime here’s the utterly gorgeous, ominous cover:

Originally published in South Africa by Umuzi, Nineveh has also been brought out in French by Editions Zoe and in Spanish by Almadia in Mexico.

Robbed! The stuffed lion caper

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 when researching my novel Green Lion. It houses many very old & historic pieces, and I went there to track down a particular Victorian specimen of an extinct Cape black-maned lion. This guy:

At the time, I was taken aback by the intense security at the vast “secret” warehouse; they told me it was to stop people “messing around” with the specimens. Now I understand. Although I am truly astonished anyone got in the door.

Anyway, I really hope they didn’t grab my lion. And I swear it wasn’t me.

Saints, serendipity & Green Lion

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 National Gallery the first time I came to London as a teenager, and the postcard I bought of it then is still on my wall in Cape Town.

I can’t seem to go to sleep tonight, so was browsing through the Antonellos online when I saw this wonderful thing:

photo: The London Art File

 

photo: archives de l’imaginaire

This is a 3D model recreating the interior of Antonello’s painting, by sound and installation artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (2015). The piece was in last year’s Soundscapes show at the National Gallery (which I missed because I was in Cape Town, launching Green Lion): “Looking through an opening, a miniature world is revealed complete with tiny objects on Jerome’s shelves and windows giving views on a landscape. Voices, birdsong and footfalls can be heard all around.”

The model reminded me of this:

photo: Eden Morfaux

Raphael Zarka, Studio, after Antonello da Messina, 2008. I came across this image a few years ago when I was researching Green Lion i.e. randomly Googling pictures of lions etc, and thought it was cool. Now, searching for this photo again at 2am for no particular reason, I stumble on the fact that Zarka is in a group show opening this very Saturday in London, where I happen to be once again. I believe I shall go.

I am still not sleepy.

Also, would quite like a desk like that.

Green Lion: roaring and purring

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 the pages … Memory and loss are at the centre of this immaculately conceived book that is as grand as it is personal, and more of a roar than a purr.

Read the full review here.

Talking hawks with Helen Macdonald

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; to read it all, join The Good Book Appreciation Society by emailing goodbookappreciation@yahoo.com or friend Bea Reader on FB.

n+1 takes on Green Lion as a “novel of ideas”

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, for a slightly colder way of positioning the novel in relation to its subjects? For a bit more head, perhaps, along with the heart?

… [Rose-Innes’s] closest technical predecessor is J. M. Coetzee, with whom she shares a penchant for imagining the world stripped of people.