Imraan Coovadia 
Transformations [PDF ebook] 
Essays

What does Playboy have to do with Nabokovs infamous novel Lolita and his obsession with a butterfly? Why is Shrien Dewani looking so cheap? And what can Ovids Metamorphosis show us about contemporary South African society? Imraan Coovadias Transformations is a collection of short pieces in the tradition of the essayist: exciting, probing, intelligent and readable. The essays are on writing, politics and culture from a South African perspective. Written with his signature wit, and with subjects ranging from vuvuzelas to J M Coetzee, Tolstoy to Mbeki, Coovadias essays cast a wide net and, like literature and the country, never fail to surprise.