Innie Shadows

by Olivia M. Coetzee

A taut and unsparing novel about a community plagued by violence, drugs, corruption, and prejudice—but where love and justice prevail.

The unidentifiable remains of a body are discovered in a field in Shadow Heights, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. Ley, the youngest detective at her precinct, is assigned the case and quickly begins her investigation. Soon after, Ley receives a phone call saying that Carl, a friend struggling with a meth addiction, has gone missing after being linked to the Drug King of Shadow Heights. Meanwhile, a local church group believes they are cleansing the area by burning sinners, starting with homosexuals.

The search for Carl and the truth leads the reader through the vibrant lives of the residents of Shadow Heights. Violence, poverty, and shame plague the neighborhood, but there is also love, acceptance, and hope to be found among friends and family in the shadows of everyday life.

A pioneering work of fiction in which the dispossessed tell their own stories, Innie Shadows is the first novel to be translated from Kaaps, a dialect of Afrikaans that was until recently a spoken language only.

Genres: Queer, Fiction, South Africa

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Shadows
A review of the House of Anansi Spiderline paperback (October 15, 2024) English translation by the author from the Afrikaaps language original Innie Shadows (2019).

I was immediately curious about Innie Shadows when its English translation was published by Canada's House of Anansi this past week in its Spiderline crime & mysteries imprint. It is reportedly the first ever English translation from a novel originally written in the Kaaps language, either a dialect or a separate language from Afrikaans (see below for a link to an article about that).

The book is novella length and a fast read. Its story is set in the Cape Town community of Shadow Heights, which takes its name from being in the shadow of the imposing Table Mountain which overlooks the city in South Africa.


A view of Table Mountain and Cape Town, South Africa as seen from a distance. Image sourced from Wikipedia.

The chapters switch POV between several characters, the main 5 of whom were friends since childhood. There is trans woman Nique (short for Veronique, formerly Vernon) a hairdresser, Carl a meth addict and gofer for a local crime lord, Sara a student who hopes for an international scholarship, Gershwin the secret male lover of a local pastor and Ley a police officer.

Carl has been missing for a few weeks and recently a burnt body has been discovered in the nearby forest. Carl's friends fear the worst but the secrets they uncover are worse than they could possibly imagine.

Innie Shadows was a compulsive read, although to some extent the reader will be able to predict what the characters themselves will only later discover. I was especially glad to discover the background to the Kaaps language and learn about the original South African publisher Modjaji Books, whose tagline is "Making rain for South African women writers and readers."

Trivia and Links
You can read the English language Chapter 1 excerpt from Innie Shadows at Words Without Borders here from The Queer Issue XII, June 8, 2021.

You can read Olivia M. Coetzee's article about the Kaaps / Afrikaaps language at The Language called Kaaps: An Introduction, Words Without Borders, November 2, 2021.

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

In unsentimental, spare prose, Coetzee tells the story of two murders in a Cape Town neighbourhood called The Shadows. There's a lot in here about grief, poverty, addiction, and love. Coetzee is so good at getting the distinct POV of each character from the friend group in their early 20s that the book centres on.

The passages from Carl's perspective were particularly gutting:

"They never teach you the right things at school, like how to free yourself from being tied up." (Ouch, the dark humor in that)

"When I smoke, her [his mom's] memory grows bigger and bigger with every exhale, but then she disappears like childhood happiness"

"my tired is tired"

"I always wondered why grownups drank the way they did, until I became a grownup the day mom died."

The depiction of queerness (one POV is a trans woman and multiple characters are queer men) is very interesting, very matter of fact and not rosy. Being queer doesn't save you from, well, anything.

Genre-wise I'm not sure where this is sitting, because it's not a traditional mystery even though it's categorized as such. You know who did what pretty early on, even if the characters don't.

Coetzee originally wrote this novel in Kaaps, a spoken language in South Africa that is influenced by Khoi and San (Indigenous African), English, Dutch, Portuguese, and South Asian people. It's the first novel translated to English from Kaaps (translated by the author herself).

This book will stay with me, especially images like this:

"People who'd lost the fight against meth floated like autumn leaves down the street."

[Elizabeth☮ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in South Africa in an area called The Shadows. The story focuses on several friends that have known one another since grade school. There are complicated relationships and many secrets amonog the group, but they all support and hold up one another.

When Carl, a meth addict, goes missing, the friends began to wonder if it's a simple dive into drug use or something more nefarious is occurring.

What I like about this one is it takes place within a week and is told from the character's various POVs. It is a story of poverty, homophobia, and sexual assault. It is also a story of love, hope and redemption.

Not for the faint of heart.

The book was originally published in Kaaps - a language originally created in colonial South Africa that has not been recognized by the government. Coetzee wrote her book in English, but was encouraged to write it in Kaaps. There is a movement to publish more books in this language.

[♡ retrovvitches ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was heart breaking!! for something so short it was incredibly emotionally draining. i really enjoyed this. lots of characters but very easy to keep track of who is who and what is what. the only thing is sometimes the dialogue fell super flat but that’s most likely due to this being translated into english

[Candace Feinberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once I got into the rhythm of reading in 'Kaaps', the characters came alive. 'n Lekker local riller

[Lady Roguey · Rating 4 out of 5]

It honestly doesn’t read as much as a story with characters than memento ass timeline where we happen to be watching conversations and events? And I don’t mean that in a bad way honestly i thought it made it super interesting being a fly on the wall bouncing from one event/day to another back and forth.

I do think that the book suffers, for me, from being translated from another language. Like the way things are described, dialogue is written and overall pace of sentences feels kind of disconnected. It’s not bad, and again was kinda endearing to the story and characters in the sense that I did feel out of place dropped in this city trying to piece together the story just like the characters.

As for the story, good lord it’s fucking bleak. Fascinating but bleak. No one gets a break, everyone is dealing with shit and it’s often hard to read what happens to these characters. Overall tho, good shit

[Tutankhamun18 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short book is set in South Africa and was written in the South African spoken language Kaaps.

It follows a new detective and her friends as they try to find out what happend to their friend and meth addict, Carl. The main cast features lots of different queer characters.

The mystery was not too suprising, but the cast of characters and the full circle moments made the story really enjoyable. It explored friendship, love and betrayal through a number of different relationships familial, sexual, romantic and friendship. It also explored belief, identity and religion in both a positve and negative way.

I think this book did alot in few pages and I really enjoyed reading it.

[Clayton Cheever · Rating 4 out of 5]

likely the first novel translated from Kaaps, a language only recently recognized that has been traced back nearly 500 years through the colonial history of South Africa.
this is a dark tale told from many perspectives in a poor neighborhood in Cape Town called the Shadows. Gender, addiction, poverty, power, and religion wreck damage across lives that demand respect and condemnation.
the author asks the reader to take care while reading, as there is intense violence. this book is not written to help people feel good, but I hope it increases understanding and compassion

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

[3.5/5] As someone always seeking out new languages to read in translation, I was thrilled to see this novel, which was not only a new language I hadn't even heard of, but it actually the first novel ever to be published in that language. I learned that Kaaps is considered a spoken dialect of Afrikaans, and had been rarely codified or written down. This author not only wrote this novel in Kaaps, but translated it herself into English, which I'd say is quite rare. There's a great Author's Note at the end where Coetzee touches on the writing process and Kaaps' status and recognition within South Africa as its own language. That alone was fascinating context with which to approach this novel. It's restrained and not fancy in its execution, but is still impactful. Despite it being short, I did feel there could have been more done to flesh out the characters and really tie them together so that the final act hits that much harder. Because there's a lot of jumping around and a lot of individual threads and relationships to follow, it would have deepened the read for me to have them explored more on the page.

I'm always excited to learn about cultures and languages that are unfamiliar to me, and this was an excellent way to do so. I hope Coetzee continues to write and translate, as she's clearly doing so much for the language and for the people who speak it.

[Karan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 I appreciated the book more when I read mid-way through that it had been written in Kaaps, and the author’s note.