The changeover from imperial to metric measurement used by Imraan Coovadia as a metaphor for the change in conciousness of South Africans. What really counts in life? writes Jane Rosenthal.
TALES OF THE METRIC SYSTEM by Imraan Coovadia (Umuzi)
In this novel, his longest to date, Coovadia has burst beyond his previous urbane, ironic, witty, obscure and oblique style into something impassioned, inspired and often lyrical.
He moves away from a tightly constructed net of ideas to show people’s real inner lives, daily experience.
This novel is far richer, deeper and more philosophically interesting than its rather dry title might suggest; and it’s very different from the satirical romp The Institute of Taxi Poetry, which won the M-Net Award in 2013.
Written as a set of interconnecting stories, Tales of the Metric System will take you into the world of our recent past, covering a 40-year period; it is set mainly in South Africa, from 1970 to 2010, and ends with a flashback to the mid 1970s.
The characters encompass a diverse bunch of South Africans, including Neil Hunter, an academic and political activist in Durban, Yash, a young guitarist and his cousin, Logan Naicker; also Samuel Shabangu, caretaker of the Caledonian Christian Men’s Hostel and his vulnerable young protege, Victor Moloi.
Among the many women we meet powerful, chatty Parveen, married into the inner circle of the ANC; Esther Koroleng, an angry nurse in a township; Tanith, opportunist and driver of a Mercedes sportscar; and Shanti, Born Free, insouciant and kind.
Though Coovadia does make light reference to the changeover from the imperial system of weights and measures to the metric system in 1970, this is really a metaphor for the change in consciousness that began to manifest at that time, once people began to recover from the rigours of the big political trials of the 1960s.
The era spanned by this novel is full of fascination and Coovadia’s novel explores this fully. His writing is deceptively simple, absorbing – and exhilarating; there is something to ponder on every page, some quirky juxtaposition, neat and understated, but which is effective in compiling this very complex portrait in Tales of the Metric System – once you know what Coovadia really means by this.
For full review by Jane Rosenthal see Mail & Guardian
