The Folly, The - Softcover

Vladislavic, Ivan

3.66

173 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1897959117 ISBN 13: 9781897959114

Publisher: Serif, 1994

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A vacant patch of South African veld next to the comfortable, complacent Malgas household has been taken over by a mysterious, eccentric figure with "a plan". Fashioning his tools out of recycled garbage, the stranger enlists Malgas's help in clearing the land and planning his mansion. Slowly but inevitably, the stranger's charm and the novel's richly inventive language draws Malgas into "the plan" and he sees, feels and moves into the new building. Then, just as remorselessly, all that seemed solid begins to melt back into air.

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Review:

'I see the book as a playful-sinister examination of the potentially dangerous false realities of literature, and even of language itself. In a way it is an enactment of its own folly - as we are warned in the title ... It sounds odd, I know, but it gives you the feeling that the very book you are holding is alive in a dangerous and unsettling way, with its own consciousness and self-awareness.' Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian ------- 'Vladislavic is a weaver of spells, and I read his book at once captivated and cautious as to how it would cap off its vaunting fantasy ... a satire on - and a love letter to - human gullibility, and, as such, quite strange, and as special as it is strange.' Jonathan Gibbs, The Independent ------- 'This 1993 debut from the gifted South African of Croatian descent is more Pinter than Kafka and a zany variation on Coetzee's Age of Iron ... outrageously deadpan funny, stylish and prophetic.' Eileen Battersby, Books of the Year, The Irish Times ------- 'The Folly, by Ivan Vladislavic, is wonderful. It's a political allegory (or parable? or something in between?) that must have been amazing to read in the context of emerging democratic South Africa in 1993 but has lost none of its power over the years.' Audrey Schoeman, Guardian Books Blog ------- 'A fascinating piece of fiction ... The Folly is very much about our need to believe and what happens when that belief is lost.' Shiny New Fiction ------- 'Vladislavic has the knack of revealing people's personalities and idiosyncrasies in an understated manner.' Trish Beaver Daily News ------- 'In a country obsessed with social realism, Vladislavic has always tried to find less obvious ways to approach the world. An immaculately-written allegory or parable (though neither word is quite right) about two unlikely neighbours, it's a clever and elegant book that lodges in the mind like a dart.' Damon Galgut ------- 'An enigmatic newcomer to a South African veld endeavours to construct a mansion on an inherited plot of land and, in the process, pushes the sanity of his neighbours to its limit in this heady, lively, and darkly surreal novel by South African writer Vladislavic... Vladislavic's cryptic, haunting tale echoes Jorge Luis Borges and David Lynch, drawing readers into its strange depths.' Publisher's Weekly ------- 'A parable about land, ownership and power? A fable about the imagined other? An allegory of contestation and co-existence, or of the building (and dismantling) of systems? Occupying a tantalizingly unnameable region between fable, allegory and parable, Ivan Vladislavic's first novel announces a powerfully original imagination, expressed in unparalleled stylistic precision and brilliance. Nothing short of a great contemporary writer, he pushes at form and content to make something strangely new and profound of the novel.' Neel Mukherjee ------- 'The Folly is mysterious, lyrical and wickedly funny - a masterful novel about loving and fearing your neighbour. Ivan Vladislavic is one of the most significant writers working in English today. Everyone should read him.' Katie Kitamura

About the Author:

Ivan Vladislavic was born in Pretoria in 1957 and lives in Johannesburg. His acclaimed fiction includes Double Negative (And Other Stories, 2013), The Restless Supermarket (And Other Stories, 2014), 101 Detectives (And Other Stories, 2015) and The Folly (And Other Stories, 2015). He has edited books on architecture and art, and sometimes works with artists and photographers. He has also written extensively about living in a changing South Africa. Portrait with Keys (Portobello Books, 2006) is a sequence of documentary texts about Johannesburg.His work has won many awards, including the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the Alan Paton Award for non-fiction and Yale University's Windham-Campbell Prize. He is a Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing at the University of the Witwatersrand.

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