THE DISTANCE

A novel on one level about boxing and a writer's boyhood obsession with Cassius Clay, who became Muhammad Ali, THE DISTANCE opens up into an unforgettable work on collecting, brotherhood, growing up and the art of writing itself.

‘Then again, my brother's need to be someone else never goes away. He becomes a writer. You can see the catastrophe coming down the pike.'

We follow these threads through the wry voice of a man, Branko, observing and remembering his younger brother Joe's fascination with Muhammad Ali. Through childhood memories, rediscovered newspaper clippings and family anecdotes, THE DISTANCE evokes the power of the boxing ring and the creation of a legend. Deftly, delicately, but with cumulative power (‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee '), the novel also explores youth and ageing, strength and disease, and of course questions of race, belief and prejudice, the politics of a divided country and world.

A host of doubles and doppelgaengers fill these pages, imaginary friends and a sporting hero with multiple names – with all that names can reveal and disguise. Also, who chooses to use which name, and why. Intimate personal stories of a coming of age are set against the extraordinary power of sporting celebrity – the myth so great sometimes it's hard to carry.

There is so much to savour here: the perfection of Ivan's prose interlaced with Muhammad Ali's own quips and poetry, and the writings of the other characters, from the newspaper cuttings in scrapbooks (and the surprising treasures one finds on the reverse of the ‘real' story) to a mother's poignant ‘dream book', this is a textual treasure, constantly offering up more, from new perspectives.

THE DISTANCE has been long-awaited and is worth every moment of the anticipation. As Laird Hunt wrote about Ivan's first published work, THE FOLLY, ‘Vladislavic writes with spring-loaded precision about universal dreams and local desolation' – words that resonate with THE DISTANCE too.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Award-winning, critically-acclaimed author of a prestigious body of literary work. Published in ten international markets, Ivan lives in Johannesburg, where he is a Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing at the University of the Witwatersrand. He has won and been shortlisted for South Africa's most prestigious prizes and was awarded the Windham Campbell Prize 2015.