The Distance

In 'The Distance'’ Joe, a boy from Pretoria, begins to obsessively collect newspaper cuttings about Muhammad Ali (the famous boxer). Forty years later Joe begins writing a book based on his personal archive with the help of his brother Branko. “Over twenty years, I went through the scrapbooks so many times I lost track, intending to write something about them, intrigued anew by what they might reveal of the world I grew up in.”

There is so much to like about this elegant, evocative and elegiac novel by Ivan Vladislavić. It vividly evokes the rapidly changing political and cultural landscape in Africa during the 1970s. This is juxtaposed with Joe’s boyhood and family life in Pretoria. The chapters begin with epigraphs taken from newspapers in the 1970s and mix history with personal events. In this respect, the novel reminded me of Annie Ernaux’s ‘The Years’, which also traces history and collective memory alongside a more personal memoir.

The novel also poses interesting questions about the past both on a collective and a personal level. Branko questions his authority in being able to recount the past. “My brother wants me to tell his story. Or is it mine? Ours? Can a story ever belong equally to two people?’”. That question can be extended to “Can a story belong equally to a nation?”. Here the boxing analogy works well, as personal and national identity are the result of the figurative fight between memory and oblivion. In the end, as the two brothers tell us, “the archive will clarify everything.”

How is it that I haven't read Vladislavic before? This book is magnificent. Structurally, linguistically, in terms of form, of narratology, its politics and its emotive power are all rendered with flawless mastery. It's written with a light touch but is freighted with significance that gives it real weight without ever being weighed down by its own importance.

Ostensibly the story of Joe's obsession since the age of 12 with Muhammad Ali, it uses the idea of a boy's scrapbook archive to think about history: of the boxer, of apartheid-era South Africa, of three generations of a family living in Pretoria, of the relationship between two brothers, of the evolution of a book. Boxing is both viscerally literal and yet also serves as a figure for writing and the relationships between author, text and reader; and, through Ali, this also thinks about the politics of sport and, of course, of racial and religious identity.

In writing this, I realise I'm making the book sound ponderous which it really isn't - one of Vladislavic's skills is in making the offshoots cohere and keeping the whole thing marvellously readable. Moments of significance are executed with subtlety: when Joe first realises that 'the absence of black people from places like this, places my cousin and I thought of as ours, was not the natural order of things'; when he first questions America's self-perpetuated image of being 'the bastion of freedom'; when he acknowledges that part of his obsession with Ali was a covert rebellion against his conservative father.

I'm not going to say more as readers deserve to discover the nuances of this book for themselves. Those following my reviews know that I reserve my 5 stars for the truly special, meaningful books - this is one of them.

Set largely in 1970s apartheid South Africa, this is the story of Joe, a 12-year-old boy, who becomes obsessed with Muhammad Ali and compulsively fills scrapbooks with every news clipping he can find. These scrapbooks later allow Joe and his brother to look back and re-examine their own pasts and that of their country. I found the book an insightful and often moving account of a young boy’s coming-of-age in a troubled era, against a background of racism, not only in South Africa but all round the world. The portrait of Muhammad Ali was far more interesting than I expected it to be, and although I have no interest in or knowledge of boxing I found the insight into the sport surprisingly compelling. There’s so much to enjoy here. At its heart the novel is an exploration of family and especially the relationship between brothers but it is so much more than that – politics, history, sport and its importance, Muhammad Ali himself – all elements combine to make this a really accomplished work of fiction – well-paced, well-written and well-plotted with convincing characterisation and dialogue, with Joe himself being a really memorable protagonist.

One of my favourite small publishers.

Even though boxing is not one of my favourite topics, I still found this book to be lovely read. It is beautifully written - almost poetic. A boxing bildungsroman book. And a story of memories, love and resistance in Aparteid South Africa. The story of a boy's obsession with Mohammed Ali.

A lovely read.

Thank yoy fpr sending me this ARC.