Ivan Vladislavić
Auteur de Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked
A propos de l'auteur
Crédit image: foto: Minky Schlesinger
Œuvres de Ivan Vladislavić
Johannesburg. Street Addresses 1 exemplaire
Ten years of Staffrider, 1978 - 1988 1 exemplaire
Loss Library 1 exemplaire
Parçalanmış Bakış 1 exemplaire
Propaganda By Monuments and Other Stories 1 exemplaire
The Restless Supermarket 1 exemplaire
Oeuvres associées
McSweeney's Issue 42 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern): Multiples (2013) — Translator/Contributor — 62 exemplaires
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Nom canonique
- Vladislavić, Ivan
- Date de naissance
- 1957
- Sexe
- male
- Nationalité
- South Africa
- Lieu de naissance
- Pretoria, South Africa
- Lieux de résidence
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Professions
- novelist
short story writer
editor - Prix et distinctions
- Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (2015)
Membres
Critiques
Listes
Prix et récompenses
Vous aimerez peut-être aussi
Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 23
- Aussi par
- 5
- Membres
- 565
- Popularité
- #44,255
- Évaluation
- 3.9
- Critiques
- 20
- ISBN
- 62
- Langues
- 6
- Favoris
- 1
A sanitation engineer who is working on the new housing project has been invited to dinner by his boss. He worries about whether to bring a gift, what to wear, and is surprised to find two community liaisons and an unintroduced man at the dinner as well. He is the only white person at the table, and when the conversation lapses into Sotho and Zulu he is left out, leaving him to wonder if there is more going on than meets the eye.
He could already see himself looking back on it {the dinner}, from a tremendous distance, and understanding, at last, what it was all about. He wished he was there now, at that reassuring remove, on a height, filled with the wisdom of hindsight.
The restaurant where they are eating is decorated with dozens of African masks, the work of the artist S. Majara, who is hosting a party after the closing of his show called Curiouser or curio user. He had bought several cartons of masks, probably stolen, and repurposed them for his art. One party goer challenges him that the Africans who made the masks were paid peanuts, yet he is being paid outrageous sums for his art.
'...But I can't help being aware of the balance of power, the imbalance, one should say. The way you live here, the way the people who made these masks live.'
'And you, poor thing, sleeping on a bench at the station.'
'Oh, I'm talking about myself too, you mustn't take it personally. It's just a question of awareness, of being conscious and staying conscious of how things are, even if you can't change them. Especially then.'
Later, the artist thinks,
Where had Leon picked up this girl Amy? He knew the type. They drove to their televised protests in their snappy little cars, they took their djembe drums on board as hand luggage, they gazed upon exploitation and oppression through their Police sunglasses. And all along they demonstrated that there was nothing to be done. Their radicalism consisted in making manifest the impossibility of change.
Our fourth and final protagonist runs a business putting up billboards. He's on his way home from installing one in the new housing project, when he realizes that he's forgotten his phone, probably dropped at the work site. He turns back and meets the minibus that the census taker had passed in the first story.
The interconnectedness of these seemingly random strangers is similar to the way components of an exploded view seem complete unto themselves, but are parts of a larger whole. Race, class, and education level seem to divide these characters, yet they are entwined in a larger, complicated societal whole. Although the story is set post-apartheid, racism and de facto segregation are realities acknowledged by everyone. Although all the characters are besmirched by the system, I found myself drawn to them and their petty struggles. Although not a cheerful book, I was comforted by the common humanness of their situations.
This is the second book by Vladislavić that I've read, and it's very different from [The Folly], which has a fantastical or allegorical element. But I found both books thought-provoking and well-written, and although I finished both with more questions than answers, I enjoyed pondering those questions.… (plus d'informations)