First up is Imraan Coovadia’s An Enemy of the People published by Penguin Random House South Africa. It’s available in softcover and as an ebook and can be found at all major outlets.

There is a sombre kind of realism to Imraan Coovadia’s An Enemy Of The People, that is both welcoming for its familiarity and frustrating in how it bullies all your expectations of plot and genre out of the way.

While the story itself leans towards an espionage thriller, the world Coovadia creates reads a lot more like a deep, continuous internal monologue, which slows down the pacing and obliterates the tension.

Married couple, Mac and Tejal, a tax collector and a lawyer, respectively, are both at the centre of legitimately dire cases at the same time. All the details and characters concerned run parallel to real, South African government and private sector villains you’ll quickly recognise, and the web of criminality and allegiances are lifted straight off the national discussion table, so settling into the action shouldn’t be a challenge for the average South African reader.

Furthermore, Coovadia’s linguistic talent is immense. Often employing words, metaphors, and turns of phrase that are both precise and delicate, like equating the size of a child’s head to that of a cauliflower. Or using a juxtaposition like “the caress of a bluebottle” to describe someone’s sinister embrace. Brilliant.

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The way he includes the suburb of Muizenberg as a grounding character to help contextualise and humanise the family is honest and engaging, and is probably the key to keeping the academic and esoteric elements of the story from drifting out of reach. I shudder to think how inaccessible the narrative might have been without characters like Mrs. Lutchman, the baker.

Though even she gets oddly philosophical at times, which bruises her authenticity somewhat. But there is no more discomforting feature in the book than the family at its nucleus. Mac, Tejal, their two sons, Rogan and Shiv, and even their au pair, Dina, all speak to each other like there’s some kind of reward handed out at dinner for being obtuse.

The kids feel more like convenient tentacles of their father’s sensitivities and intellectualism than individuals, and that gives their home the awkward feeling of an oppressive monoculture, despite the sincere affection between them.

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All of which speaks to my difficulty with the book’s narrative voice, which is so deeply embedded into the psyche of the protagonist, that it imposes a sluggishness and Hamlet-level indecision that impedes the development of the story. As a result, An Enemy Of The People clearly isn’t a legitimate thriller, since it just creates a series of tensions that don’t quite snap in a way that feels fulfilling until it’s too late.

I encourage you to investigate it for yourself, because there is plenty to admire about Mackanjee’s integrity and natural reluctance towards the political establishment. And if An Enemy Of The People stripped away everything else and left only a frustrated SARS agent in a protracted war against the mechanics of the system, with a wife who has grown weary of his pessimism, I no doubt would have sunk into his despair like tissue in a puddle.

But because the pacing of his internal monologue casts such a significant shadow over the progress of the plot, I was left unsure of what to take away from it.

Award-winning television journalist and creative copywriter Michael Stainbank leads our revived review section, bringing fresh insight and flair. From time to time, guest reviewers will also share their perspectives. Together, they’ll spotlight stories that inspire, challenge, and entertain our readers.

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