The Folly, by Ivan Vladislavic

The Folly, by Ivan Vladislavic. Random House Struik Umuzi. Cape Town, South Africa 2014. ISBN 9781415205525 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0552-5

The Folly, by Ivan Vladislavic. Random House Struik Umuzi. Cape Town, South Africa 2014. ISBN 9781415205525 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0552-5

When Ivan Vladislavic's "The Folly" first appeared in South Africa it was read as an evocative allegory on the rise and fall of apartheid. Twenty years on, this remarkably open text is sure to strike a new set of chords.

Ivan Vladislavić  

[...] In the lounge of this house Mr and Mrs Malgas, the owners, were watching the eight o'clock news on television. Here we go again,' said Mr Malgas when the unrest report began, and he turned the sound off by remote control. At that very moment there appeared on the screen a burning shanty made of split poles, cardboard boxes and off-cuts of chipboard, and patched with newspaper and plastic bags. It was hemmed in on all sides by a great many shanties just like it, except that, for one reason or another, none of these others were burning. This is nothing,' Mrs Malgas said gloomily, 'just you wait. The worst is yet to come.' Whereupon she darted out of her Gomma Comma armchair, snatched Mr's plate from his TV tray, swept two vertebrae off it into a smudge of fat on her own plate, rattled two knives and smote them down ostentatiously, gnashed two forks with shreds of mutton and grains of rice caught between their teeth, dropped crumpled serviettes on top of the wreckage, slid the empty plate underneath the full one, set both down on the coffee-table and returned to her seat (in one florid motion). "Where is everybody?' Mr asked. The shack was still burning. Tattered curtains of flame blew out of the windows and columns of smoke rose from holes in the walls where the patches had burnt away. The smoke went straight up into the heavens. The image blurred and vibrated, then composed itself again. Next, the roof, which was made of corrugated iron and weighted with stones, brought the entire structure crashing down in a silent outburst of sparks and embers. Among the charred boards the camera disclosed an iron bedstead, the red-hot spirals of an inner-spring mattress, and a padlocked tin trunk. Then it pointed out a pair of smouldering boots. Mrs Malgas stared at the boots. Mr Malgas, who owned a hardware shop, focused on one of the corrugated sheets and remarked, 'Beautiful piece of iron.' 'Shhh!' While he was trying to gather kindling in the dark, Nieuwenhuizen tripped over his anthill again and measured his length on the ground. As he was picking himself up his hand chanced to fall on an object concealed in the grass. He extricated it excitedly. It was an old oil drum, twenty-five litres approx., hacked open crudely at one end, somewhat distended at the other. He shook some sand and grass out of it, clamped it under one arm and thumped its bottom into shape with his fist. I Ie tilted it in the moonlight. For all its blemishes, it seemed brim-full of potential a smidgen of which he was pleased to realize immediately: he carried his paltry collection of twigs in it as he tramped back to camp. It would be pleasant to sit on a stone, he thought, but he couldn't find one of the right shape or size, so he up-ended the drum and sat on that instead. He swept together a pile of dry leaves. Then he shuffled the twigs into a faggot and broke them in half. [...]

This is an excerpt from the novel: The Folly, by Ivan Vladislavic.

Title: The Folly
Author: Ivan Vladislavic
Genre: Novel
Publisher: Random House Struik
Imprint: Umuzi
Cape Town, South Africa 2014
ISBN 9781415205525 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0552-5
Softcover, 15 x 22 cm, 160 pages

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