In the Shadow of the Springs I Saw is an exploration of people and the stories of their lives in the Art Deco buildings of Springs. The novel imagines the lives of those who live in a space that is not theirs historically that they made their own. This work, in times of doom and complaint, creates a new narrative: one of revival, vigour, and celebration.
The dying mining town of Springs, one might be compelled to say if you do not take heed and scrutinise more closely the upheaval that is taking shape there. The traditional conservative Springs community has lapsed and a new and integrated communal existence is evolving comprising of people from all over the African continent. Now, the architecture remains the only nostalgic connection to the past. Such bold Art Deco buildings that were ahead of their time still retain their regalness, although they are in a vulnerable condition.
[this is] an ambitious text that comes together as a collage of different modalities of storytelling, from first and second person narration, to correspondence in the form of e mails, to poetry and songs excerpts and architectural definitions the novels collage structure and its focus on themes of disintegration, transient beauty and changing landscape. It ranges from nostalgic to matter of fact to playful and imaginative. Carolyn Ownbey, PhD, Assistant Professor and Chair, English, Communications, & Literature, Golden Gate University
Adair reflects on issues with originality and aplomb, in an unusual literary style that emphasises fragmentation, intertextuality, historical palimpsest, multiple perspectives, stark shifts of subjectivity, elaborate repetitions, form and silence as well as elaborate patterns and structures of the shifting and eroded Art Deco buildings. Within these buildings, ghostlike characters narrations, never connecting, haunt the work and briefly inhabit and shift the architecture of the text itself. Professor Bridget Grogan, University of Pretoria
Barbara Adair is a novelist and writer. In Tangier we Killed the Blue Parrot was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Award in 2004. Her novel End was shortlisted for Africa Regional Commonwealth Prize. She contributed to Queer Africa and Queer Africa 2, and her writing, particularly her travel writing, has been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies. She is currently working with the Wits Writing Centre at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 2022 she received a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Pretoria.
