THE THREE BUILDINGS THAT HAVE INFLUENCED MY LIFE THE MOST ARE ONES THAT I HAVE NEVER BEEN INTO, AND, IN ALL THREE CASES, HAVE NEVER EVEN LAID EYESON. There’s the family compound in a village in western India, which stood somewhere in obscure history, occasionally visited by somebody who made it across the Indian Ocean. There’s my father’s family house in Wills Road, in Durban, which was appropriated under the National Party in the 1950s, and there’s the modest residence in VS Naipaul’s great novel A House for Mr. Biswas, which helped me to imagine being a writer and left me with the hope of one day having a home of my own.
Like Israelis and Palestinians, we in South Africa live in imaginary houses, lost houses, possibilities and properties…
