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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.
- Sales Rank: #125278 in Audible
- Published on: 2016-01-27
- Format: Unabridged
- Original language: English
- Running time: 590 minutes
Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Searing Account of Racially Driven Conflicts Within a Post-Apartheid Family
By Ed Uyeshima
Author Achmat Dangor has given me a penetrating look at post-apartheid South Africa that I could not possibly get from a newscast. His superb novel resonates deeply with the legacy of racism that lingers well after official policies have supposedly liberated all of the country's residents. Dangor is intimate with the subject of apartheid as he worked to defeat it there and then participated in the slow process of rebuilding after the African National Congress came to power. He divides the book into three parts - Memory, Confession and Retribution - which suggests what direction the book will go, but it's a surprising and involving journey every step of the way.
The focal point of the novel is Silas Ali, a former political activist who has joined the new government as a lawyer working with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He lives with his wife, Lydia, a nurse, and their grown son, Mikey, in a township near Johannesburg. There is an inherent irony to their existence - Silas works with the government agency that grants amnesty to those who committed crimes under the old regime, but he and his family remain traumatized by the one hate crime that happened to them. It involves a twenty-year old rape and the sudden reappearance of the perpetrator, a white policeman named François du Boise. Much like Andre Dubus circles the dramatic wagons in his short story collection of revenge and retribution, "In the Bedroom", Dangor does a masterful job in building the tension within the family. Silas doesn't confront du Boise, so the much needed cathartic release is instead directed at the family, triggering a chain of events that leads to its disintegration.
The sharply observed narrative carefully interweaves the differing perspectives of Silas and Lydia. Whereas Silas is deadened by his own stoic resignation of what occurred so long ago in the past, Lydia's suffering is far more intense as she irrevocably retreats into herself. The irony is that there is no truth and reconciliation at home as Silas continues to fulfill the concept at a national level. The unfinished business between Silas and Lydia is palpable and ultimately shattering in bearing the "bitter fruit" of the title. Caught in the middle literally is their psychologically conflicted son Mikey, who has internalized his parents' pain. As he relives the past through his mother's diary, he finds out revelations which make him feel more emotionally detached than he is but subsequently lead him to take matters into his own hands. Dangor provides such vivid detail in his account that it's hard to put down.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Fairly torturous read
By pleureur.
The book has an interesting premise: what happens when a man who was witness to his wife's rape runs into the rapist in a grocery store? How does this chance encounter affect the amnesia of convenience that has been created in the intervening 20 years?
What we get instead is a smorgasbord, as there isn't much that doesn't find its way into "Bitter Fruit": rape, recovery from rape, memory, differing perceptions of the same even, incest (three different ways), police brutality, gun violence, marital tensions, biracial people, racial tensions, angst about identity, nature vs. nurture, religious confusion, unwanted children, and, to top it all off, mysterious Muslim men with an unclear agenda, until reading starts to become painful. The book is more indigestible than bitter. It's simply too much.
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
The ever-turning wheel of history
By Luan Gaines
As a young man, Silas Ali is a member of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, but Silas' wife, Lydia, is unaware of the degree of his commitment. Early in their marriage, Lydia is raped by Lieutenant DuBoise, an Afrikaans officer who takes her with impunity before her helpless husband. Such atrocities are commonplace at that time, but the event remains a personal shame until twenty years later, when Silas encounters DuBoise in the street.
South Africa is now awaiting the results of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an attempt to make peace with the brutal excesses of the country's past. The chance meeting with DuBoise stirs up years of anguish and resentment for Silas and Lydia, throwing their troubled marriage into stark relief before their extended family, but especially their son, 19-year old Mikey. Used to his parents' lack of communication and marital idiosyncrasies, Mikey secretly reads his mother's diary, which holds stunning revelations, a shocking truth that will shake the foundations of Mikey's world.
Silas has the task of informing Lydia that DuBoise has requested a public apology before the Commission and has named her as one of his victims. Although Lydia begs her husband to stop DuBoise, Silas cannot and their lives are clouded by this knowledge. Lydia watches as her husband becomes even more isolated, her son more distant: "She sees in Mikey an enslavement to another, more puritanical God: his will." For his part, Mikey dismisses the older generation, with their need for "legacy", envisioning themselves as "heroes in the struggle". The nature of betrayal is exposed, leaving Silas, Lydia and Michael without framework as the past turns against the future, the truth destructive, shattering the fragile walls of family.
Towards the end of the novel, Michael is told the story of his grandfather, a harrowing tale set in motion when the British occupied India, forcing European values upon their subjects, the seed of resentment planted in the early days of Imperialism. Much of the chaos unleashed has been years in the making. A product of the new South Africa, Michael reaches for the roots of his Muslim past, bringing him face to face with murder, both a personal and generational vengeance. The family, divided by self-interests, is a reflection of the country, factions oblivious to common ground.
The novel is perfectly written, emotionally spare, yet with a subtle intensity that unveils the secret shame and hidden truths complicated by corrupt politics and the betrayals of power. Each character startles awake, as if from a long dream, able to survive only in another, freer identity. The true nature of change is abundantly clear and the enormous price it exacts. Dangor's story is personal, a reenactment of a familiar tragedy. Indeed, in his novel "rape is a metaphor for the abuse of ordinary people in South Africa." In a world defined by Apartheid, newly released from its constrictions only to be cast into the nightmare of the AIDS epidemic, there is no voice for the anguish of imposed silence, many driven to act out their repressed memories. Beautifully understated, Bitter Fruit is a life-changing exercise of integrity and courage. Luan Gaines/2005.
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