Authors' Notes: Sven Axelrad on The Dogs of Vivo

A Letter from Sven Axelrad

Dear Reader

The Dogs of Vivo follows a group of twenty-somethings who work/hang out in a bar and dream of making it big. I was a little younger than my characters when I started working in a bar. I had just signed up for a degree in accounting and took the job because I had no money of my own to account for. The bar I worked in wasn’t a classy place, but I liked it. It had a downtrodden charm to it. It no longer exists, long since sold, turned into a Hooters, but I remember it well. None of the people who worked there (not even me) knew I would become a writer and because of this they would become, in part, fictional characters. I doubt that they would’ve behaved any differently if they had. At the time I was loose-limbed, long-haired, quite shy. I smelled vaguely of sea salt, cigarettes and hope. I was also in love. That love, it turns out, was doomed to fail. As far as I’m aware, all young love is.

‘Everyone knows the world is far too unruly to submit to numbers. The human heart is much the same.’

Now, in my forties, I’m writing this author’s note from a small cubicle in a large corporate. We manufacture tampons here, lots of them. During the day, it’s my job to prepare financial results and to make sense of the world via numbers. There’s nothing wrong with this job, I’m lucky to have it, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s pointless – everyone knows the world is far too unruly to submit to numbers. The human heart is much the same. That’s why I started writing fiction. I’m in love again and have been for quite some time. Every day I quietly hope that True Love isn’t as doomed as Young Love.

When I started writing about Vivo, a town that bears some resemblance to Durban, Joburg, Cape Town, Lisbon and Madrid, I was feeling very alone and a little hopeless (all that accounting will do that to a man). As usual, I turned to art. I wasn’t sure what I would find in this town born from a lonely mind. To my relief and delight, I found that when the chips were down my characters almost always extended kindness to each other, imperfect, oftentimes mistaken, but still there it was, kindness beneath everything. In this way, founding the fictional town of Vivo has been the creative joy of my life.

Strange as it may seem, I couldn’t have written a novel about working in a bar when I worked in a bar. It’s only now that I’m older that I’m able to think clearly about what it meant to be young and working part-time, beautiful and doomed, dancing alongside my friends to some sweet and passing song, one hand raised, and what it means to be here now, still kicking, still beautiful in some way, beautifully ruined, beautifully full of memories. The novel in your hands is made of those memories, each one wild, dangerous and lovely. In The Dogs of Vivo, Art, Maggie and Felix are about to discover all this for themselves.

Welcome to Vivo,

Sven

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Why read this: Sven Axelrad returns to the magical town of Vivo with a "beautifully ruined" story about the high cost of creative ambition. Three struggling artists face a life-altering choice when a mysterious, smartly dressed stranger offers them a shortcut to fame. It is an atmospheric, compassionate exploration of first love and the kindness that remains when everything else is sacrificed.

If you’re looking for: Literary fiction, lyrical writing, magical realism, coming-of-age, and themes of art versus commerce.

Great for fans of: The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil by Shubnum Khan and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart.

What the experts say:

• "A magical, mystical South Africa... where anything is possible." — Shubnum Khan, author of The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil.
• "This brilliant novel is about hearts... To step into Vivo is to step into a place you've never been but always used to live." — Paige Nick, Sunday Times columnist and author of Book People.

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