Tales of the Metric System

In Tales of the Metric System, Coovadia explores a turbulent South Africa from 1970 into the present. He takes his home country's transition from imperial to metric measurements as his catalyst, holding South Africa up and examining it from the diverse perspectives of his many characters. An elite white housewife married to a radical intellectual; a rock guitarist; the same guitarist's granddaughter thirty years later; a teenaged boy at the mercy of mob justice--each story takes place over one of ten days across the decades, and each protagonist has his own stakes, her own moment in time, but each is equally caught in the eddies of change. Tales of the Metric System is clear eyed, harrowing, and daring.

Author: Imraan Coovadia
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 04/25/2016
Pages: 394
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.20w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780821422267

Review Citation(s):
Foreword 05/26/2016
Publishers Weekly 06/06/2016

About the Author

Imraan Coovadia directs the creative writing program at the University of Cape Town. He is the author of several previous novels, including High Low In-between (winner of the Sunday Times Fiction Prize), and has written for the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.