Prepare to be astonished… in a surrealist kind of way

DON’T neglect reading 101 Detectives by Ivan Vladislavic, or you will miss out on 11 wonderful stories told by an author who ranks in the top echelon of South African writers. Not only is his writing technically superb, but also imaginative and creative in ways that we do not often encounter.

Vladislavic’s first publication, Missing Persons, was published in 1989 and, since then, he has become known as one of our most talented novelists, essayists and editors. He is Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing at the University of the Witwatersrand.

In the first story, The Fugu-Eaters, two security policeman, Kloppers and Bates, are waiting in a hotel room for a subject under surveillance to arrive. One whiles away the time by reading a Reader’s Digest stolen from his dentist’s waiting room, and from it comes out unexpectedly with such words of wisdom as: “The Fugu fish is 27 times more deadly than the green mamba”, and a little later, with a straight face: ‘The Fugu stuff is so dangerous, you have to have a licence to cook them”.

In the story Industrial Theatre, Vladislavic describes a hilarious, almost pantomimic nature of a car launch: please note the name of the car – The Ford Kafka.

The versatility of the author is striking: from the side-splittingly funny to the deeply moving and even grim quality of stories like Lullaby.

Each story can be read on its own, but you will miss out on many clues and patterns which recur right through the collection. Here is an extremely imaginative mind at work: humorous and playful, yet at the same time serious and penetrating.

In Mountain Landscape, a man philosophises about whether the artist Pierneef’sMountain Landscape or the photograph of Tokyo Sexwale and the lads of the Free State Stars holding up the League trophy should be the most appropriate choice for the boardroom; a Pierneef which he rediscovered stacked next to a already damaged Walter Battiss “in the broom cupboard between a filing cabinet and a three-legged chair”.

In saying that his work is surrealist, I use the term familiar to early 20th century artists: that the mind should be granted a liberty only known in dreams and be freed from the apparatus of logic. In that sense, 101 Detectives is surrealist. Things happen and consequences occur that are unexpected and sometimes purposefully puzzling. So prepare to be astonished.

Though it sounds like a contradiction, this is a funny and serious work by a serious novelist, and deserves considered attention. For the enterprising reader, here is much to ponder, much to marvel at and much to enjoy. – Ampie Muller