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Cape Fever

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Cape Fever

By: Nadia Davids
Narrated by: Roshina Ratnam
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“I loved this book. It’s beautiful. I thought about it so much after I read it.” —Sarah Jessica Parker
“It’s a stunner.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From award-winning South African author Nadia Davids comes a gothic psychological thriller set in the 1920s, where a young maid finds herself entangled with the spirits of a decaying manor and the secrets of its enigmatic owner.

I come highly recommended to Mrs. Hattingh through sentences I tell her I cannot read.

The year is 1920, in a small, unnamed city in a colonial empire. Soraya Matas believes she has found the ideal job as a personal maid to the eccentric Mrs. Hattingh, whose beautiful, decaying home is not far from The Muslim Quarter where Soraya lives with her parents. As Soraya settles into her new role, she discovers that the house is alive with spirits.

While Mrs. Hattingh eagerly awaits her son’s visit from London, she offers to help Soraya stay in touch with her fiancé Nour by writing him letters on her behalf. So begins a strange weekly meeting where Soraya dictates and Mrs. Hattingh writes—a ritual that binds the two women to one another and eventually threatens the sanity of both.

Cape Fever is a masterful blend of gothic themes, folk-tales, and psychological suspense, reminiscent of works by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Daphne du Maurier, and Soraya Matas is an unforgettable narrator, whose story of love and grief, is also a chilling exploration of class and the long reach of history. Genre Fiction Horror Psychological Thriller & Suspense
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This was a wonderful read. Spooky and creepy, but also comforting. It beautifully illustrates the webs that people weave around those that they have power over- specifically how colonisers try to consume every aspect of the colonised people. And how human they are while doing terrible things.
The way in which resistance is portrayed, rootedness, community, love, solidarity- even from the dead- is comforting, touching and encouraging.
It is a captivating book as a whole, but at the end becomes even more so.
The story is unsettling in parts, and its resolution is incredibly uplifting!

Creepy, complex and comforting

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