Imraan Coovadia Wins the Sunday Times Fiction Prize for High Low In-between

by Amanda on Jul 26th, 2010

Umuzi is proud to announce that Imraan Coovadia’s High Low In-between was honoured with this year’s R75 000 Fiction Prize during a stylish event at Summer Place in Johannesburg on Saturday, July 24.

“The novel impressed the panel in its elegance and commitment to the exploration of middle-class Durban Indian communities and their struggles for identity and place, in an all too quickly shifting democratic era,” says Sunday Times books editor, Tymon Smith.

“The Fiction Prize winner should be a work of rare imagination and style, evocative, textured and a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark in contemporary fiction. High Low In-between does just that,” he adds.

This award comes hard on the heels of Coovadia’s winning the University of Johannesburg Literary Award for the same novel. It is also shortlisted for the M-Net Prize which will be announced on 31 July. His first two novels were both shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize.

Set in KwaZulu-Natal, High Low in-between charts the relationship between Nafisa, who is coming to terms with her husband’s murder, and the people around her: her dysfunctional family as well as her patient, Millicent Dhlomo, who is dying of Aids. With gathering momentum, the novel exposes the reader to Nafisa’s world of organ donation, greedy Aids denialists, quack doctors, bribes and the looming threats by the South African Revenue Service.

Umuzi – and all at Random House Struik – extend warmest congratulations to Coovadia.

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