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Shift
In the year of the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter which outlined the principles of democracy and freedom in South Africa comes a novel set in the township where it was signed. Shift asks us to examine both the world around us...and ourselves.
Arlie is a moderately successful thirty-something photographer who can't seem to get his shit together. He can't hold onto a girlfriend, or much else, and his relationship with his parents is complicated. His agoraphobic mother, Dellie, has long drawn silence over her South African upbringing. The more she refuses to illuminate, the more Arlie wants to know.
After another break-up, Arlie needs to get away, and there's only one place he's drawn to. In Kliptown, he meets choirmaster Rufaro, singer Glory and her younger brother Samson. Amidst the poverty, violence and beauty of this neglected South African township, Arlie begins exploring ideas for an exhibition, and courting the possibility of happiness. But then his father unexpectedly turns up, and a catastrophic event changes everything.
Gusty and gripping, tender and deeply compassionate, Shift is a compulsively readable story about the messy process of art-making, and the mess of love and family. It is an unflinching, insightful and immersive novel that takes the reader inside the inner life of one township, beyond the hyperbole of newspaper headlines, to offer bold, big-hearted hope.
Arlie is a moderately successful thirty-something photographer who can't seem to get his shit together. He can't hold onto a girlfriend, or much else, and his relationship with his parents is complicated. His agoraphobic mother, Dellie, has long drawn silence over her South African upbringing. The more she refuses to illuminate, the more Arlie wants to know.
After another break-up, Arlie needs to get away, and there's only one place he's drawn to. In Kliptown, he meets choirmaster Rufaro, singer Glory and her younger brother Samson. Amidst the poverty, violence and beauty of this neglected South African township, Arlie begins exploring ideas for an exhibition, and courting the possibility of happiness. But then his father unexpectedly turns up, and a catastrophic event changes everything.
Gusty and gripping, tender and deeply compassionate, Shift is a compulsively readable story about the messy process of art-making, and the mess of love and family. It is an unflinching, insightful and immersive novel that takes the reader inside the inner life of one township, beyond the hyperbole of newspaper headlines, to offer bold, big-hearted hope.
269 pages, Paperback
First published March 10, 2025
2 people are currently reading
23 people want to read
About the author
Irma Gold
16 books29 followersIrma Gold is an Australian author, editor and reader. Her debut novel, The Breaking, won the NSW Writers Centre Varuna Fellowship and was awarded development grants by artsACT and CAPO. It won a Canberra Critics Circle Award and was shortlisted (then Highly Commended) in the ACT Notable Awards.
Irma’s critically acclaimed debut collection of short fiction, Two Steps Forward (Affirm Press), was shortlisted for or won a number of awards. Irma’s short fiction has been widely published in journals, including Meanjin, Westerly, Island, Review of Australian Fiction and Going Down Swinging, and in anthologies like Australian Love Stories edited by Cate Kennedy, and the tenth anniversary edition of Award Winning Australian Writing 2017.
Irma is also the author of five picture books for children, most recently Where the Heart Is, featured on Sarah Ferguson’s Storytime channel, and Seree’s Story.
For 24 years Irma has worked as an editor, and for a decade she was Convener of Editing at the University of Canberra. She is the commissioning editor of a number of anthologies, including The Sound of Silence, winner of the ACT Writing and Publishing Awards for Nonfiction, and The Invisible Thread, an official publication of the National Year of Reading 2012 and the Centenary of Canberra 2013 which anthologises a century of literature by writers who have called Canberra home, including Alex Miller, Marion Halligan, Roger McDonald, Kate Grenville, Omar Musa, Judith Wright and Les Murray.
Irma spent her childhood living in a beautiful old Tudor house in south-east England just down the road from Roald Dahl, and now lives by the beach in Naarm/Melbourne with two boys and a little black cat.
She is just a bit keen on travel, elephants, beaches, good coffee, jumping castles and sunshiny days. She is not at all keen on extreme heights, spiders and zoos. She is Co-host with Karen Viggers of the writing podcast, Secrets from the Green Room. Her name is pronounced Ear-ma.
Irma’s critically acclaimed debut collection of short fiction, Two Steps Forward (Affirm Press), was shortlisted for or won a number of awards. Irma’s short fiction has been widely published in journals, including Meanjin, Westerly, Island, Review of Australian Fiction and Going Down Swinging, and in anthologies like Australian Love Stories edited by Cate Kennedy, and the tenth anniversary edition of Award Winning Australian Writing 2017.
Irma is also the author of five picture books for children, most recently Where the Heart Is, featured on Sarah Ferguson’s Storytime channel, and Seree’s Story.
For 24 years Irma has worked as an editor, and for a decade she was Convener of Editing at the University of Canberra. She is the commissioning editor of a number of anthologies, including The Sound of Silence, winner of the ACT Writing and Publishing Awards for Nonfiction, and The Invisible Thread, an official publication of the National Year of Reading 2012 and the Centenary of Canberra 2013 which anthologises a century of literature by writers who have called Canberra home, including Alex Miller, Marion Halligan, Roger McDonald, Kate Grenville, Omar Musa, Judith Wright and Les Murray.
Irma spent her childhood living in a beautiful old Tudor house in south-east England just down the road from Roald Dahl, and now lives by the beach in Naarm/Melbourne with two boys and a little black cat.
She is just a bit keen on travel, elephants, beaches, good coffee, jumping castles and sunshiny days. She is not at all keen on extreme heights, spiders and zoos. She is Co-host with Karen Viggers of the writing podcast, Secrets from the Green Room. Her name is pronounced Ear-ma.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 30, 2025
For me, Dellie (Arlie’s mother) is the most interesting character, though she appears mostly at a distance – the reader only sees her up close in three scenes. I wish we could have learned more about her past, and how it led to her present-day agoraphobia and anxiety – instead, we got close ups on Arlie’s turmoil over his white privilege and his inability to hold a romantic relationship together.
My full review of Shift is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
My full review of Shift is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
March 19, 2025
Shift builds.
Truth be told after completing the first 3rd I wasn’t sure Shift was going to be for me (the writing is great throughout). A few pages past 3rd way I was hooked. There’s generational trauma, systemic racism, family angst, and romance. I finished reading Shift with a desire to know all about South Africa and its current living status. I assumed all was well, post-apartheid. Typically naive of me. Why would it be? As an Aussie, I know how unfair indigenous Australians are still treated. Shift has really got me thinking about freedom and what it means in a practical sense.
A good book makes you think, makes you yearn to learn. A good book builds a fire in your belly.
Well done, Irma Gold
Truth be told after completing the first 3rd I wasn’t sure Shift was going to be for me (the writing is great throughout). A few pages past 3rd way I was hooked. There’s generational trauma, systemic racism, family angst, and romance. I finished reading Shift with a desire to know all about South Africa and its current living status. I assumed all was well, post-apartheid. Typically naive of me. Why would it be? As an Aussie, I know how unfair indigenous Australians are still treated. Shift has really got me thinking about freedom and what it means in a practical sense.
A good book makes you think, makes you yearn to learn. A good book builds a fire in your belly.
Well done, Irma Gold
March 28, 2025
Melbourne author Irma Gold is the adventurous author of
The Breaking
(2021), a thoughtful debut novel which explored ethical issues involved in tourism in developing countries such as Thailand. As you can see from her website, she has travelled the world but not as an idle tourist in luxury hotels. Her second novel, Shift (just released today) takes the reader to Kliptown, a suburb of Soweto in South Africa, where a thirty-something photographer is at a bit of a loose end after yet another relationship breakup.
Arlie is mildly successful at what he does, but not enough to satisfy the conventional ambitions of his architect father, and his trip to Soweto is as much about escaping his father's judgementalism as it is about exploring his mother's life in South Africa under apartheid... and hopefully gathering photos that will come together in an exhibition back in Melbourne.
Kliptown is not your everyday tourist destination. It was famously the Black township where the Freedom Charter was signed in 1955, so tourists visit to discover its rich historical significance. But you can see on the faces of the tourists in the clip on my blog, that the contrast between residential and business districts is disconcerting, to say the least.
Yet there is nothing of what is sometimes called 'poverty porn' in Irma Gold's novel. To the contrary, she paints a portrait of a vibrant community that transcends scandalous governmental neglect and an absence of basic infrastructure with an informal local economy and a rich cultural life led by the choirmaster Rufaro. As the only white man there, Arlie stands out everywhere he goes, but he is accepted along with his camera, and (almost) defies the reputation of South Africa as a dangerous place where crime is out of control.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/03/10/s...
Arlie is mildly successful at what he does, but not enough to satisfy the conventional ambitions of his architect father, and his trip to Soweto is as much about escaping his father's judgementalism as it is about exploring his mother's life in South Africa under apartheid... and hopefully gathering photos that will come together in an exhibition back in Melbourne.
Kliptown is not your everyday tourist destination. It was famously the Black township where the Freedom Charter was signed in 1955, so tourists visit to discover its rich historical significance. But you can see on the faces of the tourists in the clip on my blog, that the contrast between residential and business districts is disconcerting, to say the least.
Yet there is nothing of what is sometimes called 'poverty porn' in Irma Gold's novel. To the contrary, she paints a portrait of a vibrant community that transcends scandalous governmental neglect and an absence of basic infrastructure with an informal local economy and a rich cultural life led by the choirmaster Rufaro. As the only white man there, Arlie stands out everywhere he goes, but he is accepted along with his camera, and (almost) defies the reputation of South Africa as a dangerous place where crime is out of control.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/03/10/s...
March 16, 2025
Shift by Irma Gold is recommended reading for those of you who are looking for smart, deeply probing fiction that examines political, economic, and social issues in places that are screaming into the void. Set in Kliptown, a suburb of Soweto in South Africa, renowned for its significance as the place where the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955. A quick google of Kliptown today is confronting and an example of policy NOT in action. The poverty and standard of living are apalling.
In Shift, Irma takes us to Kliptown in the shoes worn by Arlie, an idealistic and somewhat naive photograher searching for his next exhibition along with some meaning within his own life. He finds both in Kliptown but not entirely as he envisages.
Irma brings this area to life, but not as 'poverty porn', which is so often encountered in commercial fiction, but as the area most likely is - filled with vibrant people living their lives as best they can with nothing, no progress, no improvement, no infrastructure, facilities, housing, or safety. The setting is created with such visceral intensity, and Arlie's experiences there were fascinating to read about. I felt quite a part of it all.
This is a complex story with many themes. The story is a personal journey for Arlie, who struggles with his father and their relationship, in which he perceives himself as the disappointment of the family. It is also of course a text that shines a light on the situation in modern-day Kliptown and greater South Africa, touching on the intergenerational weight of shame that may be present within white families that have left South Africa. It's an illuminating story that was very thought-provoking, a great one for book clubs.
Thanks to Irma Gold and the publisher Midnight Sun for the review copy!
In Shift, Irma takes us to Kliptown in the shoes worn by Arlie, an idealistic and somewhat naive photograher searching for his next exhibition along with some meaning within his own life. He finds both in Kliptown but not entirely as he envisages.
Irma brings this area to life, but not as 'poverty porn', which is so often encountered in commercial fiction, but as the area most likely is - filled with vibrant people living their lives as best they can with nothing, no progress, no improvement, no infrastructure, facilities, housing, or safety. The setting is created with such visceral intensity, and Arlie's experiences there were fascinating to read about. I felt quite a part of it all.
This is a complex story with many themes. The story is a personal journey for Arlie, who struggles with his father and their relationship, in which he perceives himself as the disappointment of the family. It is also of course a text that shines a light on the situation in modern-day Kliptown and greater South Africa, touching on the intergenerational weight of shame that may be present within white families that have left South Africa. It's an illuminating story that was very thought-provoking, a great one for book clubs.
Thanks to Irma Gold and the publisher Midnight Sun for the review copy!
April 13, 2025
This book was an absolute winner for me. Set in Soweto in South Africa, I genuinely felt transported, the characters staying with me for days after finishing the story. Bravely tackling issues of post-apartheid racism and entrenched poverty, family history and dynamics, while also considering what it means to be an artist, Gold has still managed to deliver an engaging novel with great heart and lots of joy amongst the sorrow. The nuance and humanity that Gold has brought to complex issues and circumstances demonstrates her great skill as a writer. Highly recommend.
Read by Kate
Read by Kate
June 18, 2025
Thoughtful. Has several themes: a love story set in a poor neighbourhood of Soweto; family relationships (several, but particularly father-son); racism and the ongoing effects of apartheid; the life of an expat and how they fit within local society. Very well written in a relatively unvarnished plain style. Good character development. And all held together by a story line that flows quickly and easily. Worth reading.
March 19, 2025
SHIFT is an unforgettable book with vivid descriptions. This well written story will stay with me. It delves into the everyday lives of those living in unreasonable conditions. One man's journey to South Africa unveils what people endure on a daily basis. SHIFT has changed my way of thinking.
October 7, 2025
If I could give this. Higher star rating I would! Heartfelt and heartbreaking all at once. Incredibly evocative writing.
December 11, 2025
must be read..heartbreaking
July 10, 2025
I absolutely inhaled this novel, not only for its elevated literary style, but for its deeply moving explorations of relationships, place, and pervasive legacy of apartheid. It’s such a layered novel, yet delivered it with such accessibility - one of the hallmarks of truly great writing.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews