Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked

by Ivan Vladislavic

Overview

“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. Through precisely crafted snapshots, Ivan Vladislavic observes the unpredictable, day-today transformation of his embattled city: the homeless using manholes as cupboards, a public statue slowly cannibalized for scrap. Most poignantly he charts the small, devastating changes along the postapartheid streets: walls grow higher, neighborhoods are gated off, the keys multiply. Security—insecurity?—is the growth industry. Vladislavic, described as “one of the most imaginative minds at work in South African literature today” (André Brink), delivers “one of the best things ever written about a great, if schizophrenic, city, and an utterly true picture of the new South Africa” (Christopher Hope).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393071511
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	311 KB

About the Author

Born in Pretoria in 1957, Ivan Vladislavic has published five works of fiction. Portrait with Keys was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and won the Alan Paton, South Africa’s major nonfiction award. He lives in Johannesburg.

What People are Saying About This

Jan Morris

Reminds me sometimes of Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul and sometimes of James Joyce’s Dubliners, but it is altogether one of a kind. . . . He leaves his readers consoled by the feeling that art and goodness alike can be impervious to squalor.

Editorial Reviews

In a post-apartheid world, the city of Johannesburg is a complicated place: racial divides still run deep, inextricably interwoven with crime and poverty, and endlessly complicated as the haves and have-nots negotiate new arrangements defined in terms of protection, invasion, and a tenuous level of common feeling. Novelist and Johannesburg resident Vladislavic recounts his day-to-day experiences and examines them from a step removed, watching as his city grows more obsessed with security: walls grow higher, neighbors more suspicious, private security forces more prevalent (hired even for middle class dinner parties). Vladislavic is exploring revolutionary ground, providing one of the most detailed looks yet at the post-apartheid city, helping define it as he ventures through it. Vladislavic can ramble, but does so with humor and care, while offering much insight on class and race relations, and urban survival in general; neither does he resort to overheated righteousness. While a certain amount of fluency in South African culture may be necessary to fully appreciate it, this book with intrigue any reader with its intense, you-are-there depiction of a city in flux.
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Publishers Weekly

"Reminds me sometimes of Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul and sometimes of James Joyce’s Dubliners, but it is altogether one of a kind. . . . He leaves his readers consoled by the feeling that art and goodness alike can be impervious to squalor."

Jan Morris

"A passionate account by a man who loves his city, shocking because it so embraces the things most people try to avoid thinking about."

The Independent [UK]

"Like the city it studies, Portrait with Keys is complex, with vast rewards for the patient reader."

Christian Science Monitor - Tracey D. Samuelson

"A wonderful book about Johannesburg....This is a love letter to Johannesburg and a truly marvelous piece of work. I read it and was deeply moved."

Literary Review - Justin Cartwright

"Portrait with Keys is a beautiful book, affecting and ingenious, opening new intellectual vistas onto art and architecture, poetry and urbanism."

Bookforum - Ian Volner

"Freshly engaging, with its wry take on security and a homeless underclass that stashes its winter wardrobe in manholes beneath Africa’s richest city."

The Guardian - Maya Jaggi

"A rare, brilliant writer. His work eschews all cant. Its sheer verve, the way it burrows beneath ossified forms of writing, its discipline and the distance it places between itself and the jaded preoccupations of local fiction, distinguish it."

Sunday Times [London]