Set in 2019, Volume 1 opens with the discovery of the mutilated body of a middle-aged white woman in the basement of Shalom Court, an abandoned block of flats in Yeoville, Johannesburg. What follows is both the struggle to identify the victim and the hunt for the killer. En route, various characters – neighbours, cops, property owners, municipal officials, as well as past and present residents of the building – co-operate or clash in terms of their own agendas and concerns.
“Utilizing brutal realism and satire, with touches of the fantastical, The Chronicles of Shalom Court delves into contemporary South Africa by cutting across cultures and classes. Its fictional universe is populated by every stratum of society fleshed out in a blend of social encodings, tonal registers and individual eccentricities. Examining competing notions of sanity, the extremes of violence and gender relations, political and bureaucratic corruption, racist phobias and everyday struggles for survival, this is truly a work of the neo-colony.” – Andries Walter Oliphant

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