Cape Fever by Nadia Davids review – a power struggle between mistress and maid

Set in a colonial city after the first world war, this story of a battle of wills between an elderly widow and her young servant is deftly told

The second novel by South African author Nadia Davids, winner of the 2024 Caine prize, is set in a “small unnamed city in a colonial empire”, shortly after the end& of the first world war. We might imagine it as a version of Cape Town –& birthplace of the author, and of JM& Coetzee, whose endorsement appears on the back cover.

Soraya, a 19-year-old woman from the Muslim quarter, is sent by her mother to work as a maid in a wealthy part of town. Her new employer, the elderly Mrs Hattingh, is a settler who fondly recalls her days “when I was a girl in England”. When the novel opens, in 1920, Mrs Hattingh lives alone: her husband is dead, and her son, Timothy, fortunate to have survived the war, lives far away in London.