Read an excerpt in The Johannesburg Review of Books

Innie Shadows se karakters klink soos regte mense van die Kaapse Vlakte en voer hul bestaan in die skadu van herkenbare probleme soos dwelmverslawing, huishoudelike geweld, armoede en seksmisdade. Dit is egter ook ‘n verhaal oor nuwe vryhede — sensitief vertel op ’n nuwe manier, in ‘n nuwe soort stem. Dr Sonja Loots, (author and lecturer in Afrikaans and Nederlands)

Olivia M. Coetzee crafts a new language to bring to life stories of dispossession from those left behind in the transition to democracy. Her prose is taut, unsparing and unsentimental. It wrestles with the demons of one community overcome with the social ills of drugs, bigotry and homophobia, where lives intersect through ruthless brutality. This haunting novel will stay with the reader long after the final page is turned. A pioneering work of fiction in which the dispossessed are finally telling their own stories. Dr Barbara Boswell (author of Grace, a novel)

Innie Shadows is ‘n Kaapse Vlakte riller roman,wat genres kruis; ‘n bladsyraaier, met uitstekend dialoog. with excellent dialogue. Sou goed werk as n’ film. Hester van der Walt, author of Sê my, is julle twee susters?

“From the outset, Coetzee did not turn a blind eye. […] In the tradition of Adam Small, and more recently Chase Rhys, Coetzee is another writer who writes Cape Town as it lies on the tongue of her speakers. But it goes so much further – her Cape is in small hidden (and yet not) parts so much different than both. Her clamps fall sharply and softly where the dramatic tone of the tension builds and stagnates (intentionally, of course). The way Coetzee uses her truncation mark to a lesser extent offers a kind of “no apology for the standard form”.” Herschelle Benjamin, LitNet

Read an interview that Olivia did with Naomi Meyer on Lit Net