Portrait with Keys
The City of Johannesburg Unlocked
In the wake of apartheid, Johannesburg has changed - still divided, but now as much by poverty and violence as by race. Through precisely crafted snapshots, Ivan Vladislavic observes the unpredictable, day-to-day transformation of his embattled city: the homeless people using manholes as cupboards;a public statue slowly cannibalized for scrap. Most poignantly he charts the small, devastating changes along the post-apartheid streets: walls grow...
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Imraan Coovadia Another unpronounceable name. His dad may have been from Croatia or something. It’s always suspicious when people immigrate to South Africa. But Ivan is the most interesting writer on modern urban South Africa. Portrait with Keys is a fictionalised set of little stories. I thought it was a memoir at first but in the book he has conversations with a nonexistent brother. So I decided to classify it as a novel. It’s called Portrait with Keys because everywhere in Johannesburg is locked up, often not just with one door, but with multiple doors. When you stay overnight in a house, they lock all... (Source)
Kevin Bloom I think that Ivan Vladislavic is probably our most unheralded writer. It is my personal belief that since J M Coetzee left for Australia, Ivan is the best craftsman living and working in South Africa today. He is an astoundingly accomplished master of the English sentence. This book is his first work of nonfiction. (Source)