I see you - Softcover

"Eloquent and beautifully written, Ishtiyaq Shukri's newest book weaves together multiple viewpoints in a colourful tapestry of genres, which leaves us contemplating the complexities of war, and questioning the nature of freedom and power in post-1994 South Africa. What, then, is the 'deep state'? Here is how it works. You think your country has undergone a transition to democracy. You have had roughly free and fair elections. You have new leaders in charge. Yet you begin to realise that, as the French say, the more things change the more they stay the same. You realise that there are powerful elite formations bequeathed by years, even decades, of authoritarian rule still able to block progressive change and protect their interests..." - Sina Odugbemi.

Leila Mashal, a medical doctor trained at Wits, has taken up politics. Her platform is a single issue: freedom. In declaring her candidacy, she wishes to make public her belief that 'while South Africans hold the vote, they don't hold the power'. She is also the wife of Tariq Hassan, a renowned photojournalist whose abduction from a Johannesburg hotel made international headlines. Held in solitary confinement in an unstated locale, Tariq contemplates his isolation, his life's work, his longing for Leila, the nature of time, and the torturous effects of abject isolation on his mind. Flashbacks - narrated from both Tariq's and Leila's points of view - tell the central story of Tariq's abduction. The novel uses different documents and formats to fill in the gaps. Radio interviews, emails, journal entries, newspaper articles, personal recollections - even an opera score - all expand the plot. They provide insight into Tariq's career as a photojournalist, photographing people displaced by conflict and war, from Libya and Palestine, to Afghanistan and Kasalia - a fictional African country in the grip of a brutal civil war. Might Tariq's exposure of covert South African involvement in the civil war in Kasalia have prompted his abduction?