Credit: Minky Schlesinger
THE NEAR NORTH, the latest book by double-Sunday Times Literary Award-winner Ivan Vladislavić, will be published by new independent publisher Batis Books. Director Nick Mulgrew acquired UK and Irish rights (excluding Audio) from Isobel Dixon, and will publish in premium trade paperback format at the end of 2026.
Originally published in South Africa by Picador Africa in March 2024, and extracted in the Yale Review, THE NEAR NORTH was longlisted for South Africa’s Sunday Times Literary Awards last year. A vivid personal account of life in Johannesburg during times of crisis, in its obsession with place- and homemaking, The Near North is in some ways a companion to Vladislavić’s earlier, award-winning PORTRAIT WITH KEYS – but it stands alone as its own achievement. This is a narrative of fine description and self-reflection by a writer with a flaneur’s spirit, even as he bumps against the sharp edges of violence against nature and people alike.
‘THE NEAR NORTH could not have found a more congenial home than Batis,’ said Ivan. ‘Nick Mulgrew is a ground-breaking publisher and I’m thrilled to be part of his new venture. I look forward very much to working with him.’
‘It is my honour to bring Ivan Vladislavić’s most recent work to the British and Irish markets,’ added Nick Mulgrew, director of Batis Books. ‘Vladislavić is one of South Africa’s great contemporary writers, and THE NEAR NORTH is a book that, patiently and powerfully, makes personal the amazing chaos of Jo’burg – a place that is at once manmade forest, securitised suburban sprawl and decaying modern city. Vladislavić gets to grips with a place that even its inhabitants can find overwhelming.’
Isobel Dixon says: “I’m delighted that Ivan and his brilliant THE NEAR NORTH will join the exciting new Batis Books list. I’ve long appreciated Nick Mulgrew’s vision and publishing acumen and it’s a great pleasure to join forces to bring Ivan’s latest work to more readers this year.’
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 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 THE NEAR NORTH
‘Some of the most moving prose ever written about this former mining town…What a chronicle of a city in perpetual crisis.’ – Jacob Dlamini (author of ASKARI)
‘Ivan Vladislavić’s hand, not unlike that of Marlene Dumas, is unshaking as it paints silent, slow and highly vivid, almost cinematic, lines on the canvas of our shared Johannesburg… A masterful form of reportage of life spent seeing… feeling.’ – Bongani Madondo
‘A bewitching meditation. A raw, literary, and heart-felt ode to life in Johannesburg.’ – Andrew Harding
‘An elegant, gentle, bitter-sweet ramble through the streets of Johannesburg with the incomparable Vladislavić.’ – Jonny Steinberg
‘Ivan is one of South Africa’s best writers… the book is filled with exquisitely observed observations of Johannesburg in all its different moods and the different way people experience the different streets of Johannesburg: absolutely exquisite writing.’ – John Maytham, CapeTalk
‘THE NEAR NORTH has the febrile, hallucinatory feel of JG Ballard’s earlier apocalyptic novels, but tempered and made gentle by a Proustian attention to the ordinary that manages to make the book both paean and threnody.’ – Chris Roper, Daily Maverick
‘Vladislavić's helpless addiction to the inexhaustible variety of the ordinary reality is what makes his books so extraordinary. THE NEAR NORTH is a delightful addition to a substantial output.’ – Michiel Heyns (translated from Afrikaans)
‘There is sadness, rage, confusion and humour in the author’s responses to things but they come together in a reassuring gentle wisdom, an acceptance of things as they are, even as he wishes they could be different. There has been no waning of the author’s observational powers, and no waxing of the author’s ego. It’s a beautiful book. A true thing.’ – Karin Schimke
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
‘Mysterious, lyrical and wickedly funny… Ivan Vladislavić is one of the most significant writers working in English today. Everyone should read him.’ – Katie Kitamura
‘In a country obsessed with social realism, Vladislavic has always tried to find less obvious ways to approach the world.’ – Damon Galgut
‘Vladislavić's narrative intelligence is nowhere more visible than in his way with language itself… We enter incidents in medias res – as though they were piano études – and exit them before we have overstayed our welcome.’ – Teju Cole
‘Nothing short of a great contemporary writer, he pushes at form and content to make something strangely new and profound.’ – Neel Mukherjee