Trade Paperback, 211 pages RRP: R145, ISBN 1-4152-0020-3 Publication date: June 2006, Category: Memoir Description A book about a city that has been described as ‘the Venice of the South’, Portrait with Keys is a portrait of life in Johannesburg – and ‘what-what’: home, habit, change, memory, mortality, friendship, ghosts, gardens, walking, falling, selling, stealing ... Neither a novel nor a collection of short stories, the book consists of 138 short texts organised in two parts – Point A and Point B – followed by Notes and Sources, Itineraries and an Author’s Note. Written by a consummate literary artist, this is a unique dossier of city life and a selective self-portrait of the author – in Ivan Vladislavić’s words “a bit like a map that shows only the side streets”. Memory takes root only half in the folds of the brain: half’s in the concrete streets we’ve lived along. – Lionel Abrahams, poet and author. Winner of the 2007 Alan Paton Award. Winner of the 2007 University of Johannesburg Prize for the best creative work in English. From Portrait with Keys, Point A, section 68 “In Johannesburg, the Venice of the South, the backdrop is always a man-made one. We have planted a forest the birds endorse. For hills we have mine dumps covered with grass. We do not wait for time and the elements to weather us, we change scenery ourselves, to suit our moods. Nature is for other people, in other places ...” To read on The major themes of Portrait with Keys ... are the I-beams that make up the chassis. Subsidiary themes, such as crime and art and architecture, are the brakes and suspension ... The little snippets – for instance, the list of car-guards’ notes – are the city’s rivets and bolts exploded out along their dotted diameters. - William Dicey, author and book designer. A painterly example of the kind of exploration quietly taking place in local literature, it is neither memoir, novel, nor a collection of short stories, but all at the same time. Read the SA Bookworm review (27 January 2008). E-mail us a comment on this book. (Comments may be edited and used on this website.) To buy this book www.exclusivebooks.com www.kalahari.net home   writers   books   contact   buy   rights all content © Umuzi, Random House Struik this website designed and maintained by Guanaco.co.za