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December 9, 2025 
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| Hayden Goodman |
Dear readers,
I promise I will not make a habit of introducing math equations to this newsletter. But I’ve had a weirdly Gothic-heavy year, reading-wise, and knew only the basics about the genre. (Creaky houses, ghosts, hysterics, dread.)
Fortunately, I learned a simple formulation from a 2019 review by Parul Sehgal: The Gothic’s “first, and essential, ingredients, according to the scholar Mary Ann Doane, are simply ‘woman plus habitation,’” she wrote. “The horror of a woman finding fear where she expected safety is enough to power an entire genre.”
Easy enough to remember — and endlessly adaptable.
This week I review “Cape Fever,” by the South African writer Nadia Davids. It’s a historical novel, set in the 1920s, and follows a young Muslim maid who tangles with her eccentric and domineering white employer. I’ll admit what first drew me to it was a geeky, longstanding interest in novels that deal with the legacy of colonialism. It makes sense that the Gothic would arrive in South Africa — just another of Britain’s imperial imports! — but Davids mixes in religious beliefs and local myth to write a truly unsettling story.
See you on Friday.
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