South Africa’s Imraan Coovadia has answered all our prayers for new, exciting African fiction. His latest offering blends spy fiction and sci-fi! The book is titled A Spy in Time and tells the story of a time-traveling spy.

In the story, Johannesburg is the center of a post-apocalyptic world. The main character is a spy and journeys through various time periods to solve a mystery on which the fate of the world depends.

Read the intriguing synopsis

He’s the Agency’s newest recruit, eager to leap through his first gate into an unfamiliar time. In Enver’s home city of Johannesburg, fair-skinned people are a rarity and have been for centuries. The people of Johannesburg were spared the ravages of the apocalypse because of the thousands of miles of mining tunnels running beneath it.

The Agency’s thinking machines have set his first mission for Marrakesh, circa 1955. His handler is the tough and taciturn Shanumi Six.

Their mission: prevent the apocalypse from happening again.

But when a cabal of temporal chaos-bringers kidnaps Shanumi, Enver must strike out across the timeline’s hotspots―Rio de Janeiro 1967, Johannesburg 2271―on a mission to preserve our very existence. His journeys put him in the middle of a catastrophe which will force him to put his assumptions to the test in an atmosphere of conspiracy and intrigue.

Award-winning novelist Imraan Coovadia (The Wedding, Tales of the Metric System) returns with this crackling Afrofuturistic tale of intrigue in which the course of human history hangs in the balance.

A Spy in Time is clearly a multi-genre story. It integrates elements from scifi, spyfi, and crime fiction. The fact that it imagines a future built on blackness means it also references afro-futurism.

Coovadia is an academic known for writing novels that fall under the category of high-brow fiction, in addition to essays exploring contemporary South African life. So this foray into genre fiction will be interesting to watch.

The 296-page book is his 8th book. It is being published by Los Angeles-based Rare Bird Books. The book doesn’t come out until August 8, but the pre-order link is already live. So click the link below to save a copy for yourself.

Amazon | Preorder