La Distancia

In the spring of 1970, in the city of Pretoria, a boy named Joe discovers Muhammad Ali, the legendary boxer formerly known as Cassius Clay. In a country marked by distance, violence, and silence, the champion represents more than just a boxer: he is a magnetic force, a challenge to the established order, a promise of greatness. Joe begins obsessively clipping every news item, every photograph, every fragment of Ali's life, building an archive that grows with him. Decades later, that archive becomes the starting point for a book and an exploration of the past. This novel is a profound meditation on memory, identity, and how we construct meaning from scattered fragments. With precise and moving prose, Ivan Vladislavic offers a story about heroes and brothers, about the passage of time and about distance—the distance that separates people, and the distance that, sometimes, binds them together forever.