Ivan Vladislavic: 6 books

“Surely one of the most ingenious love letters—full of violence, fear, humour, and cunning—ever addressed to a city.” —Geoff Dyer This dazzling portrait of Johannesburg is one of the most haunting, poetic pieces of reportage about a metropolis since Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City....

Dropout Neville Lister accompanies acclaimed photographer Saul Auerbach for a day, to learn a lesson for life. They play a game: from a hill above Johannesburg they pick three houses and decide to knock on their doors in search of a story. Auerbach's images of the first two will become classic portraits,...

It is 1993, and Aubrey Tearle's world is shutting down. He has recently retired from a lifetime of proofreading telephone directories. His favourite neighbourhood haunt in Johannesburg, the Café Europa, is about to close its doors; the familiar old South Africa has almost vanished. Standards, he...

Collects two volumes of short stories by one of contemporary South Africa's most acclaimed novelists. With a tender wit, Vladislavić cuts through the ordinary, the profound, and the truly perplexing to reveal absurdities and truisms alike. From a man who forms a strong emotional attachment...

The Exploded View, from the masterful South African novelist Ivan Vladislavić, tells the story of four lives intertwined through the sprawling infrastructure on the margins of Johhanesburg: a stastician taking the national census, an engineer out on the town with city officials, an artist interested...

A vacant patch of South African veld next to the comfortable, complacent Malgas household has been taken over by a mysterious, eccentric figure with "a plan." Fashioning his tools out of recycled garbage, the stranger enlists Malgas's help in clearing the land and planning his mansion. Slowly...