Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked (Paperback)

By Ivan Vladislavic
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Description

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" (Andre 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-10: 0393335402
ISBN-13: 9780393335408
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 06/01/2009
Pages: 203
Language: English