101 Detectives (Paperback)

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.

Ivan Vladislavic is the author of several collections of stories and acclaimed novels including Double Negative (And Other Stories, 2013), The Restless Supermarket (And Other Stories, 2014), 101 Detectives (And Other Stories, 2015) and The Folly (And Other Stories, 2015). Vladislavic has written extensively about Johannesburg, where he lives. Portrait with Keys (Portobello Books, 2006) is a sequence of documentary texts about the city. His work has won many awards, including the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the Alan Paton Award for non-fiction and Yale University’s Windham-Campbell Prize. He is a Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing at the University of the Witwatersrand.