Abstract:
This article examines the strategies used by Johannesburg writers Phaswane
Mpe and Ivan Vladislavić in their texts Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2001) and
Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked (2006) to make sense
of the bewildering transformations of post-apartheid Johannesburg. The article
begins by sketching the transformations of the city in the wake of the
dismantlement of apartheid-era segregation, sketching in particular the way in
which the city has been turned „inside-out‟. It then goes on to examine in the
texts by Mpe‟s and Vladislavić‟s figures of the „inside-out‟, specifically Mpe‟s
use of narratological loops and Vladislavić‟s implementation of the figure of the
Möbius strip, to show how these recent literary texts have attempted to elucidate
the vertiginous demographic changes in the city.
