Summary

Ivan Vladislavić is one of the most significant writers in South Africa today. Internationally his stature rests on his responsiveness to the contemporary, his humor, his honed style, his articulation of the search for home within the urban, his delicate balance between immersion and objectivity. These qualities appeal especially to those who have migrated to the big urban spaces of the world. Locally he has been positioned by critics as the voice of the "now" in post-apartheid letters for his forensic analysis of South Africa in transition from the exceptional and marginalized to the merely marginal. That he finds many of the promises of democracy betrayed is axiomatic; that he discovers some alternative to this betrayal in a creative consciousness and minimalist mode of writing that pays detailed attention to the marginal is crucial. This edited volume collects much of the significant and original critical material, ranging from reviews to interviews to full length articles, so far published on Vladislavić's individual works. In compiling the book, Gerald Gaylard has chosen critical material of diverse opinion and form, from the scholarly to the casual and creative, in order to indicate the wideranging and fertile responses that Vladislavić's writing elicits. Moreover, he has included examples of the initial reception of each of Vladislavić's books upon their publication. Marginal Spaces offers therefore not only a critical celebration of Vladislavić via a sense of the reception of his works, but also a sense of how literary and cultural production and reading have changed since the end of apartheid via a collection of the original interpretive directions that his work has been part of, enabled and encouraged. This critical material will be of benefit to readers and scholars of Vladislavić and postapartheid South African literature, especially postcolonial city writing.