Bitter Fruit A Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Achmat Dangor Tug Yourgrau Audible Studios Books
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With the publication of Kafka's Curse, Achmat Dangor established himself as an utterly singular voice in South African fiction. His new novel, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the IMPAC-Dublin Literary Award, is a clear-eyed, witty, yet deeply serious look at South Africa's political history and its damaging legacy in the lives of those who live there. The last time Silas Ali encountered Lieutenant Du Boise, Silas was locked in the back of a police van and the lieutenant was conducting a vicious assault on Silas's wife, Lydia, in revenge for her husband's participation in Nelson Mandela's African National Congress. When Silas sees Du Boise by chance 20 years later, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is about to deliver its report, crimes from the past erupt into the present, splintering the Alis' fragile peace. Meanwhile Silas and Lydia's son, Mikey, a thoroughly contemporary young hip-hop lothario, contends in unforeseen ways with his parents' pasts. A harrowing story of a brittle family on the crossroads of history and a fearless skewering of the pieties of revolutionary movements, Bitter Fruit is a cautionary tale of how we do, or do not, address the past's deepest wounds.
Bitter Fruit A Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Achmat Dangor Tug Yourgrau Audible Studios Books
Achmat Dangor has framed a small history of South Africa around Silas Ali, his fractious family and a cohort of erstwhile comrades in the liberation movement. In the opening pages, we meet Silas' nemesis, Francois du Boise and do not "see' him again until near the closing. Yet throughout the story, it is Du Boise's terrorist shadow that stalks Silas, his wife Lydia and by extension their son, Michael. The characters are developed fully, their dialogue is realistic and their behaviors are believable. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission as the backdrop, is a useful metaphor for the characters' approaches to the many themes. On the other hand, the book is hindered by Dangor's tackling too many themes - and trying to connect them. This bogged down the story's movement. The writing is smart, poetic, and the turn of phrase is often surprisingly brilliant. Given a stronger, more satisfying ending, I would have rated this book four stars.Product details
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Bitter Fruit A Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Achmat Dangor Tug Yourgrau Audible Studios Books Reviews
At a climactic moment of Achmat Dangor's novel, "Bitter Fruit" (2004), a secondary character relates a traumatic story which works to the following conclusion "There are certain things people do not forget, or forgive. Rape is one of them. In ancient times, conquerors destroyed the will of those whom they conquered by impregnating the women. It is an ancient form of genocide." (p. 204)
In the novel, a rape which can neither be forgotten nor forgiven plays a central role. The violation of rape is important in itself, and it also serves as the defining metaphor for Dangor's picture of apartheid in South Africa and its consequence. The novel is set in the late 20th Century as South Africa struggles to emerge from its apartheid past. It is set against the background of the amnesty policy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in which the evils of the past would be memorialized and acknowledged but without bloodshed. The hope was for the country to move on while minimizing vengeance, vendettas, or grudges.
The primary characters are Silas Ali, a former activist and attorney for the TRC, his wife Lydia, and their late adolescent son Mikey who mid-way through the novel begins calling himself Michael. Silas and Lydia are both of mixed racial background but are otherwise quite different from each other. About 20 years before the story begins Lydia had been raped by a white policeman, Du Boise, in the presence of Silas who was unable to prevent the outrage. Then, 20 years later Silas runs into the aged Du Boise at a supermarket and a confrontation almost ensues. During the intervening 20 years, the couple had rarely discussed the incident which festered between them. The marriage was unhappy, sexually and otherwise. When Silas tells Lydia of his meeting with DuBois, something snaps inside both husband and wife. Lydia cuts her feet on broken glass, "dancing on glass" and is hospitalized. While visiting her, Silas has a stroke and is also hospitalized.
While his parents are hospitalized, Mikey, a brooding and introspective lad with an interest in literature finds his mother's diary and reads it. He has reason to think that he is the child of Du Boise's rape of his mother.
Besides the three primary characters, the novel offers glimpses of their family and colleagues. The latter part of the book includes a portrayal of the portion of South Africa's Islamic community which either sponsors or condones terrorism. Besides the pivotal rape incident, the book includes many scenes of other forms of sexuality, including child abuse, incest, bisexual and polyamorous relationships, closeted gay sexuality and more. Most of the sexual activity is of forms that are offensive as is most, but not all, of the sexual conduct itself.
The book was Booker Prize finalist. It offers a portrayal of the difficulties South Africa faces in moving forward and beyond its tarnished past. For the most part, I did not find "Bitter Fruit" convincing as a novel. Here are some of my reasons. Many of the individual scenes as well as the dialogue are sharp and crisp. But they contrast with the story line which drags. Other than the three primary characters, most of the other people in the book receive shadowy portrayals which distract from the story. In minute detail, the book describes the vileness and the long-term effects of rape and his analogy between rape and apartheid has some effect. The author is critical of the Truth and Reconciliation policy and he suggests that neither rape nor apartheid should be readily put aside without some attempt at what appears to be vengeance. The novel did not move me to share such a conclusion. Furthermore, the book's focus on the vile and debasing forms of human sexual practices, in addition to the rape on which the story turns, did not seem to me to add a great deal to the novel.
The novel's focus on the Ali family and on the various sexual issues of the family members and other characters also distracted from considering the book as a story of the difficulties of an emergent South Africa. The book was more the story of a sharply dysfunctional family. And the focus of the book wanders unconvincingly from Silas, to Michael, to Lydia. Lydia ultimately works to some degree of freedom from the rape and from her marriage in a brief sexual encounter with a young man after which she leaves Silas. The story line seems to shift from a metaphor about South Africa to a story of a woman in search of a difficult personal and sexual freedom. This is an inadequate denouement for the book. The story of apartheid and its aftermath encompasses people of many and diverse backgrounds as well as people of both genders. Overall, this novel does not succeed.
Robin Friedman
This story takes place in South Africa. It starts off with the promise of a great read as Silas encounters Francoise Du Boise, who had raped his wife Lydia decades earlier. This wound is freshly reopened not only for Silas but for Lydia when he tells her about it.
Then the book becomes boring and as slow as molasses with very little action, which when it fleetingly appears is interspersed with a whole lot of thinking. Example On page 95 "he urinated" but since page 92 we'd been hearing of the hospitalized Silas's "unbearable need to urinate."
On page 30 the action here is Mikey peeing and watching "the steamed froth with some satisfaction, shivers with delight at the end. How pleasing the simplest acts of gratification." I think the author loves to pad.
The story improves slightly (pg.36) when Mikey remembers how he and Mireille as youngsters "played Ghandi." However when Mikey falls asleep while he is looking at Lydia's diary hidden in her bureau, for which he went out of his way to search for the key, there was something definitely askew here, I thought.
On page 78 Kate stumbles on Mikey's ritual but the story gets diluted with that time when she sees a leopard up close. Aouch!!
And that "stuff" between Silas and Betty was..... (pg. 98). I persevered to page 100 (1/3 of the book). Couldn't take more.
The author's positives were in some of his descriptions, which were sometimes interesting and humorous.
Terrible with gratuitous sexual and violent imagery.
A couple years ago Desmond Tutu landed in hot water for saying that South Africans had lost their innate sense of right and wrong. While the level of violence that has become normal in the country may have many roots, Dangor explores how Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission helped shape (or misshape) South African mores. More adeptly than any other book I've read of the post-Apartheid era, Dangor explores the tension that rises from the new social contract. How can one determine right from wrong when murderers and rapists are forgiven so long as they claim political motive?
The novel is set in the twilight of Mandela's administration as the task of transition is over and the magnitude of the problems of crime, violence against women, corruption and AIDS are becoming clear. The novel examines the impact of a rape through view of the woman, her husband and her son. The writing is superb. Unlike Disgrace, you won't find cardboard cutouts shuffling around a desolate landscape. Bitter Fruit may be a sharp critique of South Africa but it is also hopeful. The characters in this novel may not understand how to make sense of their present but their actions, good and bad, break the culture of denial and loosen the shackles of the past.
Achmat Dangor has framed a small history of South Africa around Silas Ali, his fractious family and a cohort of erstwhile comrades in the liberation movement. In the opening pages, we meet Silas' nemesis, Francois du Boise and do not "see' him again until near the closing. Yet throughout the story, it is Du Boise's terrorist shadow that stalks Silas, his wife Lydia and by extension their son, Michael. The characters are developed fully, their dialogue is realistic and their behaviors are believable. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission as the backdrop, is a useful metaphor for the characters' approaches to the many themes. On the other hand, the book is hindered by Dangor's tackling too many themes - and trying to connect them. This bogged down the story's movement. The writing is smart, poetic, and the turn of phrase is often surprisingly brilliant. Given a stronger, more satisfying ending, I would have rated this book four stars.
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