The Launch of Imraan Coovadia’s High Low In-between

June 29th, 2009 by Emily

Imraan Coovadia’s latest novel, High Low In-between, was launched at the Book Lounge in Cape Town last Thursday evening. Coovadia, a lecturer in English at UCT, is the author of the acclaimed Green-eyed Thieves.

Set in KwaZulu Natal, the novel deals with the “in-between” position, politically, of Indians in South Africa. According to Coovadia, by extension the book is thus also about “the decomposition of the left”.

Coovadia was in conversation with Ben Williams, editor of BOOK SA. Williams called High Low In-between the “long-awaited novel of ideas”, emphasising the kind of perspicacity which sees Coovadia being regarded as a top intellectual.

High Low In-between, noted Coovadia, was written during the static years of the Mbeki government, and has the fight for the correct medical response to AIDS at its heart. For this reason, its tone can be pessimistic – yet not quite afro-pessimistic, not quite Naipaulian in its views. Afro-pessimism is a notable feature of the work of VS Naipaul, who is a strong influence on Coovadia. (His next book, a work of criticism, takes Naipaul as its subject.)

Coovadia acknowledged the inspiration that his doctor-father provided when he was writing this book. Dr Hoosen Coovadia “always manages to be at the centre of things”, said the son: to be at the most tender places in South African politics (like medicine). In High Low In-between, the surgeons still see themselves as revolutionaries.

Williams proposed that the book was best-viewed in the light of one of its dominant metaphors, that of the mirror, or looking glass. It was, said Williams, “as if Imraan has taken each page and held it up to South Africa as a kind of mirror”. And good fiction relies on this ability to reflect and deflect.

Coovadia read an entertaining piece from an unpublished work which had the audience laughing throughout. But Book Lounge owner, Mervyn Sloman, reacted to this by snatching up a copy of the book of the night and reading from its opening paragraph, on the basis that the crowd couldn’t go without hearing it; it was just too good.

“‘In preparation for the visitors the house was being cleaned from top to bottom,’” read Sloman. “‘Everybody was miserable.’” The same certainly couldn’t be said for those who packed into his bookshop on the night!