Book Review: Shift by Irma Gold
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 a 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.
Gutsy 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.
Published by MidnightSun Publishing
Released March 2025
My Thoughts:Shift by Irma Gold is recommended reading for those of you who are looking for smart, deeply probing fiction that examines political, economic, and social issues in places that are screaming into the void. Set in Kliptown, a suburb of Soweto in South Africa, renowned for its significance as the place where the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955. A quick google of Kliptown today is confronting and an example of policy NOT in action. The poverty and standard of living are apalling.
In Shift, Irma takes us to Kliptown in the shoes worn by Arlie, an idealistic and somewhat naive photograher searching for his next exhibition along with some meaning within his own life. He finds both in Kliptown but not entirely as he envisages.
Irma brings this area to life, but not as ‘poverty porn’, which is so often encountered in commercial fiction, but as the area most likely is – filled with vibrant people living their lives as best they can with nothing, no progress, no improvement, no infrastructure, facilities, housing, or safety. The setting is created with such visceral intensity, and Arlie’s experiences there were fascinating to read about. I felt quite a part of it all.
This is a complex story with many themes. The story is a personal journey for Arlie, who struggles with his father and their relationship, in which he perceives himself as the disappointment of the family. It is also of course a text that shines a light on the situation in modern-day Kliptown and greater South Africa, touching on the intergenerational weight of shame that may be present within white families that have left South Africa. It’s an illuminating story that was very thought-provoking, a great one for book clubs.
Thanks to Irma Gold and the publisher MidnightSun for the review copy!
