Set largely in Johannesburg, these pieces examine how people read cities, images, documents, and each other — and how meaning is inferred, misread, or quietly manufactured.

A photograph, a building, a newspaper clipping, an offhand remark: each becomes a site of investigation. The “detectives” here are not professionals but ordinary observers, attempting to make sense of environments shaped by history, bureaucracy, and chance.

This is fiction interested in perception rather than plot, and in interpretation as a form of power. Calm, funny, and exacting, it’s a key work by one of the most important contemporary writers working in short form.

First edition, first printing.