In Conversation with Irma Gold | This event has now been CANCELLED due to low ticket sales
Humffray Room
Shift
Irma Gold
‘Unforgettable’ – Nigel Featherstone.
‘Evocative, propulsive and heartbreaking, Shift is a novel that can change the way you think.’ – Rochelle Siemienowicz,
Double Happiness
‘Seductive, superbly atmospheric and beautifully narrated with a painterly, cinemascope feel, Shift will make your heart race.’ – Niq Mhlongo, The City is Mine
In the year of the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter – which outlined the principles of democracy and freedom in South Africa – comes a novel set in the township where it was signed. Shift asks us to examine both the world around us…and ourselves.
Arlie is a moderately successful thirty-something photographer who can’t seem to get his shit together. He can’t hold onto a girlfriend, or much else, and his relationship with his parents is complicated. His agoraphobic mother, Dellie, has long drawn silence over her South African upbringing. The more she refuses to illuminate, the more Arlie wants to know.
After another break-up, Arlie needs to get away, and there’s only one place he’s drawn to. In Kliptown, he meets choirmaster Rufaro, singer Glory and her younger brother Samson. Amidst the poverty, violence and beauty of this neglected South African township, Arlie begins exploring ideas for an exhibition, and courting the possibility of happiness. But then his father unexpectedly turns up, and a catastrophic event changes everything.
Gusty and gripping, tender and deeply compassionate, Shift is a compulsively readable story about the messy process of art-making, and the mess of love and family. It is an unflinching, insightful and immersive novel that takes the reader inside the inner life of one township, beyond the hyperbole of newspaper headlines, to offer bold, big-hearted hope.
About the author
$11.78 per person includes booking fee & gst, also includes light refreshment. All proceeds go to the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute to support the staging of our author events.
Book on-line or contact Rosemary at the Libary via email library@ballaratmi.org.au or phone (03) 5331 3042
This event takes place on Wadawurrung Country. Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute acknowledges the Wadawurrung People of the Kulin Nation as the first inhabitants and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we work, learn and create. Always Was, Always Will Be, Aboriginal Land.
