Other Writing

A SELECTION OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS

'Time-Travelling in the Archive' in Publishing from the South

Publishing from the South: A Century of Wits University Press is edited by Sarah Nuttall and Isabel Hofmeyr and published by WUP. Featuring contributions from scholars, publishers and authors, this multi-voiced volume offers a deep dive into the history, sociology and politics of the oldest South African university press. It explores the strategies deployed to professionalise global South knowledge making and supports the scholarly missions of their universities.

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'In Passing' in Walking as Embodied Research

In recent years, walking has emerged as a methodological tool and as a conceptually exciting point of departure across a range of disciplines and practices. This volume explores walking as a form of embodied research practice that offers fresh perspectives on key contemporary debates and areas of interest. These include the climate emergency and the debate around the Anthropocene, decolonial thinking and the struggle for social justice, feminist and queer walking methodologies, and the notion of the ‘infraordinary’ and practices of everyday life. Walking as Embodied Research: Drift, Pause, Indirection is edited by Christian Ernsten and Nick Shepherd and published by Routledge.

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La Lecture published by Éditions Elyzad

The Tunisian imprint Elyzad has published a French translation of Vladislavić's story 'The Reading' as a separate volume. The text, which appeared in the collection 101 Detectives, is translated by Georges Lory.

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Peter Beilharz Festschrift: 'Three Lectures'

On the occasion of his 70th birthday, friends and colleagues of Peter Beilharz celebrate his work and friendship in articles and other reflections. The texts make up a special issue of Thesis Eleven, the journal he co-founded in 1980.

Full issue here

'Cast in Stone' in PARSE, #16, Spring 2023

'Cast in Stone' presents observations on monuments and museums alongside commentary on artworks and accounts of chance encounters and daily life. Drawing on notebooks kept during a stay in Germany more than twenty yerars ago, Vladislavic finds a new path through the rubble of unfinished work. The essay arose during the 'Conviviality and Contamination' workshop, which travelled between Sweden and Germany in the autumn of 2022. All the work produced in that collaborative engagement appears in PARSE #16. Vladislavic's essay is accompanied by an artwork by Abrie Fourie. 

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'A Faceless Compass' in the Yale Review

The Winter 2022 issue of the Yale Review celebrates the tenth year of the Windham-Campbell Prizes. The issue features new work by current and former prize-winners, including this essay by Ivan Vladislavic.

Read the issue here

'Uppläsningen' published by Karavan

The Stockholm-based magazine Karavan has published a Swedish translation of 'The Reading' from Vladislavic's story collection 101 Detectives. 'Uppläsningen', translated by Julian Birbrajer, appears in the mini-book series Karavan Novell.

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'On the Verge' in Sprout

The second issue of the eco-journal Sprout has been published. 'On the Verge' is a reflection on life in Johannesburg during the pandemic.

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'Here' in David Goldblatt: Johannesburg 1948-2018

The Goodman Gallery has published a catalogue linked to their London exhibition 'David Goldblatt: Johannesburg 1948-2018'. The publication, which includes essays by Ivan Vladislavic and Mandla Langa, is available online.

Note: This publication is no longer accessible

'Save the Pedestals' in the Yale Review

Read a new story by Ivan Vladislavic in the Yale Review. This 200th anniversary issue of the YR, the first under the editorship of Meghan O'Rourke, is packed with new fiction, nonfiction, poetry and reviews.

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'Here' in David Goldblatt By ...

Photographer Baptiste Lignel has put together a book of tributes to David Goldblatt by fellow photographers, artists, writers and curators associated with him. The contributors, including twenty photographers, write about their encounters with Goldblatt and what his work means to them.

Details here

'Party Animals' in Harvard Review

A new story by Ivan Vladislavic has appeared in Harvard Review 54.

More on the issue here

'Fear of Arrival' in Lapham's Quarterly

The Summer 2017 issue of Lapham's Quarterly is all about fear.

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101 Detectives in The Offing

The title story of Vladislavic's latest collection has appeared in The Offing, an online channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books.

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'Exit Strategy' in Granta

This story is drawn from Ivan Vladislavic's new collection 101 Detectives, due to be published by Umuzi in May and by And Other Stories in June. 

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S.J. Naude and Ivan Vladislavic in conversation, Granta

S.J. Naude and Ivan Vladislavic exchange ideas about writing. Naude's The Alphabet of Birds will be published by And Other Stories in January.

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Chris van Wyk, 1957-2014

My friend Chris died on 3 October. He wrote two wonderful memoirs, Shirley, Goodness and Mercy, and Eggs to Lay, Chickens to Hatch, and that's where you can get to know him. My tribute to Chris is on Books LIVE.

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‘Tango’ in McSweeney’s 42, 2012

With the help of guest editor Adam Thirlwell (author of Kapow!, Visual Editions), Issue 42 is a monumental experiment in translated literature—twelve stories taken through six translators apiece, weaving into English and then back out again, gaining new twists and textures each time, just as you'd expect a Kierkegaard story brought into English by Clancy Martin and then sent into Dutch by Cees Nooteboom before being made into English again by J.M. Coetzee to do. With original texts by Kafka and Kharms and Kenji Miyazawa, and translations by Lydia Davis and David Mitchell and Zadie Smith (along with others by John Banville and Tom McCarthy and Javier Marías, and even more by Shteyngart and Eugenides and A.S. Byatt), this will be an issue unlike anything you've seen before...

 

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‘Propaganda by Monuments’ in Between Walls and Windows: Architektur und Ideologie, with a German translation, 2012

Architektur = Ideologie? Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin
1958 schenkten die USA Westberlin eine Kongresshalle als »Leuchtfeuer der Freiheit, das seine Strahlen nach Osten sendet«, wie Architekt Hugh Stubbins sein Werk definierte. Heute beherbergt das Gebäude das Haus der Kulturen der Welt, die Ideologie...

 

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‘The Last Walk’ in The White Review, no. 5, 2012

‘The Cold Storage Club: Notes on Not Writing’ in Abrie Fourie, Oblique, 2011

The installation ‘Oblique’ by Abrie Fourie follows the publication of the artist’s monograph of the same name, published in 2011. The body of work on display contains two sets of images. The HD-film installation presents all the images contained in the monograph as a series of slides, while a selection of images are installed as framed photographs...

 

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‘Attachments: On flea market finds and other objects’ in Dave Southwood, Milnerton Market, 2011

‘Propaganda by Monuments’ in Clare Butcher and Mia Jankowicz, Propaganda by Monuments, Cairo, 2011, with an Arabic translation

On 25 May 2006, Angola launched the Icarus 13, the world’s first space mission to the sun. For two years, 70 laborers, artists and engineers worked relentlessly to build the spacecraft and plan the mission. It landed on the sun at 10 pm. According to the astronauts, “The sun has the most beautiful night.” Proud of their accomplishment, Angolans are planning to launch the first ”solar tourist” flight in 2011 -- at least in the imagination of an artist...

 

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‘Hair Shirt’ in Louis Greenberg, Home Away, 2010

Being South African isn’t as black and white as it used to be. People from all over the world make this country their home, while South Africans have more geographic freedom than ever before. This unique and captivating collection is a snapshot of South African writing today: diverse, energetic, inquisitive and compelling. In Home Away, twenty-four chapters by twenty-four writers, set in cities all around the world, make up one global day, a mosaic...

 

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‘Modderfontein Road’ in Tamar Garb, Home Lands – Land Marks: Contemporary Art from South Africa, 2008

Focusing on the work of seven contemporary South African artists--David Goldblatt, Nicholas Hlobo, William Kentridge, Vivienne Koorland, Santu Mofokeng, Berni Searle and Guy Tillim--this scholarly and well-designed exhibition catalogue focuses on images and invocations of landscape that explore the country today. Differing from the usual approach to post-apartheid South Africa, the book addresses the complexity of the landscape...

 

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‘A Farm in Eloff Street’ in Carlos Basualdo, William Kentridge: Tapestries, 2008

South African artist William Kentridge (b. 1955) has produced an outstanding body of work in multiple mediums—drawings, animations, sculptures, theater and stage design—all of which trace the fraught political and cultural history of South Africa. This book is the first to explore Kentridge’s extraordinary new series of seventeen large-scale tapestries, created under his artistic direction by a team of South African weavers between 2001 and 2007...

 

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‘Helena Shein’ in Terry Kurgan and Jo Ractliffe, Johannesburg Circa Now, 2005

Johannesburg Circa Now is about photography and the city and it began with a conversation between my colleague Jo Ractliffe and myself. Cities run on conversations and ours led to an ever-widening circle of engagement with others. At the centre of our original discussion were two shared preoccupations. On the one hand, an abiding interest in photography’s relation to the real and how photographs mediate our experience of ourselves in the world. On the other, the practical experience of having...

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‘City centre’ in Roger Palmer, Overseas, 2004

Books

  • THE NEAR NORTH

    The Near North is a vivid account of life in Johannesburg in times of crisis. From the stony ridges of Read More
  • The Distance

    In the spring of 1970, a Pretoria schoolboy falls in love with Muhammad Ali. He begins to collect cuttings about Read More
  • The Exploded View

    ‘The boundaries of Johannesburg are drifting away, sliding over pristine ridges and valleys, lodging in tenuous places, slipping again. At Read More
  • The Folly

    One quiet evening, somewhere in the old South Africa, the settled existence of Mr and Mrs Malgas is disrupted by Read More
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