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A review by sett
Portrait with Keys: Joburg & What-What by Ivan Vladislavić
4.0
A collection of vignettes from the author's life in South Africa, particularly in Joburg, mostly through the past 3 decades until early 2000s. And though it is impossible to speak of life in SA without qualifying it through the lens of social class, it is not the focus of the book. Nor is it a memoir or anything like that. It's a compelling, honest "portrait" of middle class South African life, garnished with some damn good prose from a talented writer.
Cliché as it might seem, there is no place quite like South Africa which is equal parts unforgiving, funny and bizarre - and full of contradictions. Although this is something you only realise fully when you've lived somewhere else. Joburg is complex, and Vladislavic animates it through vivid anecdotes and observations through a writer's eye. But most importantly, it is never saccharine nor gritty like you've come to expect.
Like the author, I grew up in Pretoria and moved to Joburg in my adult life. I found myself chuckling at the familiar, the good and bad. It gives a sense of catharsis, through shared experience and I am compelled share it with strangers, foreigners. But I don't know whether any of it will be understandable, except by fellow South Africans.
I read this book over the course of a year upon recommendation from a friend. It is a good book to read whilst travelling, because of its format.
"The urban poacher is a romantic figure. In unequal cities, where those who have little must survive somehow by preying on those who have more, the poacher scavenging a meal from under the nose of the gamekeeper may be admired for his ingenuity and daring."
"Pretoria children were hard and brown and bristly; Joburg children had floppy fringes and soft freckled hands and looked as if they never went outside. Yet all the fun we had riding bicycles and kicking soccer balls counted for nothing because they were in here working, wearing paper hats and striped aprons as if they were in an Archie comic. They were already kids and we were still children."
"[Sean says:] 'It was fucked when I was a kid, in an Afrikaans sort of way. It was fucked when I was a teenager, in a more Portuguese sort of way. And now here I am, fully grown, surrounded by Angolans and Nigerians - and guess what, it's still fucked. It's just a different shade of fucked.'"
Cliché as it might seem, there is no place quite like South Africa which is equal parts unforgiving, funny and bizarre - and full of contradictions. Although this is something you only realise fully when you've lived somewhere else. Joburg is complex, and Vladislavic animates it through vivid anecdotes and observations through a writer's eye. But most importantly, it is never saccharine nor gritty like you've come to expect.
Like the author, I grew up in Pretoria and moved to Joburg in my adult life. I found myself chuckling at the familiar, the good and bad. It gives a sense of catharsis, through shared experience and I am compelled share it with strangers, foreigners. But I don't know whether any of it will be understandable, except by fellow South Africans.
I read this book over the course of a year upon recommendation from a friend. It is a good book to read whilst travelling, because of its format.
"The urban poacher is a romantic figure. In unequal cities, where those who have little must survive somehow by preying on those who have more, the poacher scavenging a meal from under the nose of the gamekeeper may be admired for his ingenuity and daring."
"Pretoria children were hard and brown and bristly; Joburg children had floppy fringes and soft freckled hands and looked as if they never went outside. Yet all the fun we had riding bicycles and kicking soccer balls counted for nothing because they were in here working, wearing paper hats and striped aprons as if they were in an Archie comic. They were already kids and we were still children."
"[Sean says:] 'It was fucked when I was a kid, in an Afrikaans sort of way. It was fucked when I was a teenager, in a more Portuguese sort of way. And now here I am, fully grown, surrounded by Angolans and Nigerians - and guess what, it's still fucked. It's just a different shade of fucked.'"