PORTRAIT WITH KEYS has already won the Sunday Times Prize and the University of Johannesburg Prize in South Africa, and in the UK was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2007.

PORTRAIT WITH KEYS is published by Umuzi in South Africa (where it won the Sunday Times and University of Johanesburg Prizes) and Portobello in the UK (where it was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize). Norton will publish in the US in 2009, with rights sold in France, Germany and Norway. In addition, Ivan Vladislavic's fiction works THE EXPLODED VIEW and THE RESTLESS SUPERMARKET have been published in Sweden.

The judging panel for the Warwick Prize is chaired by award-winning writer China Miéville. Judges include journalist Maya Jaggi; novelist, translator and academic Maureen Freely; Britain's first book blogger Stephen Mitchelmore, and University of Warwick mathematician Professor Ian Stewart. A shortlist of six titles will be announced on 23 January 2009, with the winner announced in February at the University of Warwick.

'PORTRAIT WITH KEYS is surely one of the most ingenious love letters - full of violence, fear, humour and cunning - ever addressed to a city. If Italo Calvino had grown up in Jo'burg and experienced both apartheid and its aftermath this is the kind of book he would have been proud to have written.' Geoff Dyer

See full piece on the Guardian site

Ivan Vladislavic's biography page