Photo: Minky Schlesinger
We are delighted that Pan Macmillan SA have acquired THE NEAR NORTH, the latest work from Ivan Vladislavić, for publication in Southern Africa in March 2024.
Terry Morris, MD of Pan Macmillan South Africa, says: ‘A new work by Ivan Vladislavić is always a momentous literary occasion. Pan Macmillan is honoured and thrilled to be publishing THE NEAR NORTH, which showcases Ivan at his inventive, lyrical and immersive best.’
Ivan Vladislavić says: ‘I am excited to be joining the Pan Macmillan fold. Picador Africa publishes some of my favourite writers and does so with skill and flair. Their Johannesburg shelf, which includes classics such as Dangor’s BITTER FRUIT and Van Wyk’s SHIRLEY, GOODNESS AND MERCY, keeps growing all the time. My work will be at home in this company and I look forward to a productive association.’
Ivan’s agent, Isobel Dixon of Blake Friedmann, adds: ‘It was a great pleasure to clinch this deal, seeing the passion for Ivan’s work from the team at Pan Macmillan SA. The Near North is a book of intense acuity and quiet power and will stand in excellent company on the Picador Africa list.’
Revolving around a writer in the city of Johannesburg in different states of lockdown, THE NEAR NORTH’s narrative traces his steps along the city’s streets, as he meets its ghosts and muses on found objects, journeying through eras and examining deep divides as he walks.
Wryly playful at times, fiercely serious at others, THE NEAR NORTH is kin to Vladislavić’s award-winning PORTRAIT WITH KEYS (which Geoff Dyer described as ‘one of the most ingenious love letters – full of violence, fear, humour and cunning – ever addressed to a city’), but is at the same time an entirely original and quietly intimate work of great power.
About Ivan Vladislavić
Ivan Vladislavić was born in Pretoria in 1957 and lives in Johannesburg. His books include the novels THE DISTANCE, THE RESTLESS SUPERMARKET, THE EXPLODED VIEW and DOUBLE NEGATIVE, and the story collections 101 DETECTIVES and FLASHBACK HOTEL. In 2006, he published PORTRAIT WITH KEYS, a sequence of documentary texts on Johannesburg. He has edited books on architecture and art, and sometimes works with artists and photographers. TJ/DOUBLE NEGATIVE, a joint project with photographer David Goldblatt, received the 2011 Kraszna-Krausz Award for best photography book. His work has been published in 11 languages.
His work has also won the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the Alan Paton Award, the University of Johannesburg Prize and Yale University’s Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction. He is a Distinguished Professor in the Creative Writing Department at Wits University.
Praise for Ivan Vladislavić
‘Ivan Vladislavić occupies a place all of his own in the South African literary landscape: a versatile stylist and formal innovator whose work is nevertheless firmly rooted in contemporary urban life.’ – J.M. Coetzee
‘Vladislavić is among the top writers on the contemporary world stage.’ – Neel Mukherjee
‘Mysterious, lyrical and wickedly funny… Ivan Vladislavić is one of the most significant writers working in English today. Everyone should read him.’ – Katie Kitamura, BOMB Magazine
‘One of South Africa's most finely tuned observers’ – Ted Hodgkinson, The Times Literary Supplement
‘Ivan Vladislavić is certainly one of the most remarkable and versatile writers of our time’ – Thando Njovane, Africa in Words