'You can’t rush the building of a new house. You’ve got to get the whole thing clear in the mind’s eye. 'Mr and Mrs Malgas are going quietly about their lives when an eccentric squatter called Nieuwenhuizen arrives on the vacant plot next to their home and plans to build an elaborate mansion. Slowly, Father, as Nieuwenhuizen likes to be called, draws Mr Malgas into his grand scheme, while Mrs Malgas keeps an anxious watch from her lounge window. When The Folly first appeared it was read as an evocative allegory on the rise and fall of apartheid. Twenty years on, this remarkably open text is sure to strike a new set of chords. Grimly humorous and playfully serious, Ivan Vladislavic’s classic first novel is a comic and philosophical masterpiece