Welcome to Litsy!

�Surely one of the most ingenious love letters�full of violence, fear, humour, and cunning�ever addressed to a city.� �Geoff Dyer This dazzling portrait of Johannesburg is one of the most haunting, poetic pieces of reportage about a metropolis since Suketu Mehta�s Maximum City. Through precisely crafted snapshots, Ivan Vladislavic observes the unpredictable, day-today transformation of his embattled city: the homeless using manholes as cupboards, a public statue slowly cannibalized for scrap. Most poignantly he charts the small, devastating changes along the postapartheid streets: walls grow higher, neighborhoods are gated off, the keys multiply. Security�insecurity?�is the growth industry. Vladislavic, described as �one of the most imaginative minds at work in South African literature today� (Andr� Brink), delivers �one of the best things ever written about a great, if schizophrenic, city, and an utterly true picture of the new South Africa� (Christopher Hope).