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Bitter Fruit
by Achmat Dangor
Synopsis: Early in Dangor's embittered second novel about his native South Africa, aloof, independent 19-year-old Mikey comes to the realisation that 'history has a remembering process of its own, one that gives life to its imaginary monsters.' This understanding of the past informs the thoughts and actions of the characters, which the author of Kafka's Curse explores in meticulous detail.
Mikey's parents, Silas and Lydia Ali, are members of the black middle class in post apartheid South Africa. But when Silas, a lawyer for the Justice Department, encounters the white police lieutenant who raped his wife two decades before, old wounds open in his and Lydia's already strained marriage. Mikey discovers that he may be the product of his mother's violation and sets out to explore his familial roots, taking a type of 'apartheid heritage route' that leads him to Silas's father's mosque.
Dangor's novel, a Man Booker Prize finalist, interrogates the forgiving attitude of people like Archbishop Tutu, and, as Silas puts it, 'the namby-pambying of God's ferocious legions.' In this environment, where even incestuous transgressions can be rationalized away, Mikey finds vengeance as a way to order the decayed social structures around him. Dangor's work is a bleak look at modern South Africa in the vein of J.M. Coetzee's novels, but from the perspective of black South Africans.
First Line: It was inevitable.
[ skrevet av ladislav pekar ]
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