Double Negative - Softcover

Vladislavic, Ivan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908276266 ISBN 13: 9781908276261

Publisher: And Other Stories, 2013

Synopsis

"One of the most imaginative minds at work in South African literature today."—André Brink

Originally part of a collaborative project with photographer David Goldblatt, Double Negative is a subtle triptych that captures the ordinary life of Neville Lister during South Africa's extraordinary revolution. Ivan Vladislavic lays moments side by side like photographs on a table. He lucidly portrays a city and its many lives through reflections on memory, art, and what we should really be seeking.

Ivan Vladislavic is the author of a number of prize-winning fiction and nonfiction books. He currently lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.

About this title

About the Author

IVAN VLADISLAVIC is the author of the novels The Folly, The Restless Supermarket, The Exploded View and Double Negative. The last of these appeared initially in TJ/Double Negative, a joint project with the photographer David Goldblatt. Vladislavić has written extensively about Johannesburg, notably in Portrait with Keys (2006). He has edited volumes on architecture and art, and published a monograph on the conceptual artist Willem Boshoff. The compendium volume Flashback Hotel (2010) gathered together his early stories. Recent books are The Loss Library and Other Unfinished Stories, a reflection on writing and other things, and A Labour of Moles, a small comedy of meanings illustrated by Ornan Rotem. His work has won the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the Alan Paton Award and the University of Johannesburg Prize, while TJ/Double Negative received the 2011 Kraszna-Krausz Award for best photography book.

Reviews

In Vladislavic´'s (Portrait with Keys) unusual take on South African apartheid, Neville Lister, a college student in Johannesburg in the 1980s, decides that he wants to experience the real world and drops out of university, much to the consternation of his parents. His concerned father has him spend a day with Saul Auerbach, a noted photographer. Auerbach comes up with the idea of picking three houses at random, then photographing their owners and listening to their stories. But after visiting the first two houses, the photographer loses interest and scraps the idea. It is only a decade later that Neville decides to complete Auerbach's task. In that intervening time, Neville has moved to London to escape army service, become a photographer himself, and returned to Johannesburg to see the changes caused by the end of apartheid. Along the way, we see Neville's relationship with his widowed mother, we meet the several women in his life, and we are told of his ambivalent attitude toward his art. It's this ambivalence that makes Neville a frustrating character, although the author crafts the details of his life with a crystalline clarity. The subject of apartheid is treated in the most glancing way, a possible comment on how historical movements are sometimes secondary considerations in the lives of ordinary people. (Nov.)

Edition details

• Publisher: And Other Stories
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1908276266
• ISBN 13: 9781908276261
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200