Set in KwaZulu-Natal, High Low In-between charts the relationship between Nafisa, who is coming to terms with her husband's murder, and the people around her: her dysfunctional family as well as her patient, Millicent Dhlomo, who is dying of AIDS. With gathering momentum, the novel exposes the reader to Nafisa's world of organ donation, greedy AIDS denialists, quack doctors, bribes and the looming threats by the South African Revenue Service.
Having been part of the struggle, Nafisa now faces the sinister complications of the post-apartheid dispensation and finds herself ostracised once more. We learn with Nafisa what it is to live in a time of various plagues: in which a slip of a needle is a prospective death, in which your husband can be murdered because he received a kidney he didn't know was acquired illicitly, in which death by AIDS has become a currency in the hands of the morally bereft and the politically expedient, and in which acquiring, concealing, and channelling funds determines the lives and prospects of us all.
