The Exploded View by Ivan Vladislavic

ISBN: 9780958446860

Random House, 2004

Paperback, 201 pages

The Exploded View is a novel in four parts set in a transforming Johannesburg. In ‘Villa Toscana’, an engineer supervises the building of a Tuscan-style housing development; in ‘Curiouser’, a documentary filmmaker tries to capture the essence of the city; in ‘Out of Time’, a statistician becomes increasingly obsessed with patterns of order and disorder; and in ‘Crocodile Lodge’, an entrepreneur navigates the uncertain terrain of the new South Africa.

Through these interconnected narratives, Ivan Vladislavić offers a finely observed and often unsettling portrait of urban change, exploring the tensions between past and present, order and chaos, and the visible and invisible forces shaping everyday life.