Tales of the Metric System
ABOUT
THE BOOK
From a Natal boarding school in the seventies and Soviet spies in London in the eighties to the 1995 Rugby World Cup and intrigue in the Union Buildings, Tales of the Metric System shows how ten days spread across four decades send tidal waves through the lives of ordinary and extraordinary South Africans alike.
An unforgettable cast of characters includes Ann, who is trying to protect her husband and son in 1970, and Victor, whose search for a missing document in 1973 will change his life forever. Rock guitarist Yash takes his boy to the beach on Boxing Day in 1979 to meet his revolutionary cousin, while Shanti, his granddaughter, loses her cellphone and falls in love twice on a lucky afternoon in 2010.
Playwrights, politicians, philosophers, and thieves, all caught in their individual stories, burst from the pages of Imraan Coovadia’s Tales of the Metric System as it measures South Africa’s modern history in its own remarkable units of imagination.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
This novel is rich, deep and philosophically interesting. Written as a set of interconnecting stories, Tales of the Metric System is used as a metaphor for the change in consciousness of South Africans. Coovadia examines and investigates how to decide what counts in life, how to measure this, and what is immeasurable – yet vitally important.