Ivan Vladislavić Libros

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 to his neighbor's wall to the etymology-obsessed inventor of the Omniscope, Vladislavic's characters are as well-constructed as his sentences and as playful as his prose. Flashback Hotel collects two volumes of short stories by one of contemporary South Africa's most acclaimed novelists.

This novel takes the zero tolerance approach to punctuation of Eats, Shoots and Leaves to a hilarious yet poignant conclusion.

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 in genocide, and a contractor who puts up billboards on construction sites. Arcing across distance and time, Vladislavić deftly explodes our comfortable views and brings us behind the curtains of the city while subtly expanding our notions of what is possible in the novel form.

In the wake of apartheid, the flotsam of the divided past flows over Johannesburg and settles, once the tides recede, around Ivan Vladislavic, who, patrolling his patch, surveys the changed cityscape and tries to convey for us the nature and significance of those changes. He roams over grassy mine-dumps, sifting memories, picking up the odd glittering item here and there, before everything of value gets razed or locked away behind one or other of the city's fortifications. For this is now a city of alarms, locks and security guards, a frontier place whose boundaries are perpetually contested, whose inhabitants are 'a tribe of turnkeys'. Vladislavic, this clerk of mementoes, stands still, watches and writes - and his astonishing city comes within our reach. This is for readers who want to put their faith in a writer who knows - and loves - his city from the inside out, bearing comparison with Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul and Joseph Brodsky's Watermark.

What kind of Detective am I? Eardrum or tympanum? Gullet or esophagus? Pussy or pudenda? A Detective needs a language almost as much as a language needs a Detective .In this new collection of stories, award-winning author Ivan Vladislavic invites readers to do some detective work of their own. Each story can be read as just that – a story – or you can dig a little deeper. Take a closer look, examine the artefact from all angles, and consider the clues and patterns concealed within.Whether skewering extreme marketing techniques or constructing dystopian parallel universes; whether mourning a mother’s loss or tracing a translator’s on-stage breakdown, Vladislavic’s pitch-perfect inquisitions will make you question your own language – how it defines you, and how it undoes you.

A boxing bildungsroman - a collage of memories, love, resistance, and the spectacle of Muhammed Ali in Apartheid South Africa. In the spring of 1970, a Pretoria schoolboy, Joe, becomes obsessed with Muhammad Ali. He begins collecting daily newspaper clippings about him, a passion that grows into an archive of scrapbooks. Forty years later, when Joe has become a writer, these scrapbooks become the foundation for a memoir of his childhood. When he calls upon his brother, Branko, for help uncovering their shared past, meaning comes into view in the spaces between then and now, growing up and growing old, speaking out and keeping silent.

Mr and Mrs Malgas are going about their lives when a mysterious squatter appears and convinces Mr Malgas to help him build an imaginary home next door. With its story of the seductive illusions of language, The Folly was initially read as an allegory of the rise and fall of apartheid, but is also sure to resonate with contemporary readers.

Race, politics, identity, photography: South African writer Ivan Vladislavic reminds us nothing is black and white.

Ivan Vladislavic´ entwirft in seinem gefeierten Werk ein unterhaltsames und tiefgründiges Porträt von Johannesburg und dem neuen Südafrika. Mit sprachlicher Präzision und Ironie schafft er in 138 Kapiteln eine persönliche Landkarte der Stadt.