This novel provides insight into the intricacies of a changing South Africa at the end of the 1990s. Silas Ali, a former political activist, now a middle-aged civil servant working on the final Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, is shopping in the Killarney Mall in Johannesburg when he bumps into a ghost from his past--Lieutenant Franois du Boise, a retired security policeman. This chance encounter brings back a memory that Silas and his wife Lydia have been avoiding for 20 years. The past erupts into the present, ...
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This novel provides insight into the intricacies of a changing South Africa at the end of the 1990s. Silas Ali, a former political activist, now a middle-aged civil servant working on the final Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, is shopping in the Killarney Mall in Johannesburg when he bumps into a ghost from his past--Lieutenant Franois du Boise, a retired security policeman. This chance encounter brings back a memory that Silas and his wife Lydia have been avoiding for 20 years. The past erupts into the present, cracking off the shell of normalcy that encloses their family life. This story of Silas, Lydia, and their son Mikey, a university student with a curious mind and a calculating will, provides an understanding of the politics of race, the brittle surface of urban life in postapartheid South Africa, and the deeper, more disturbing historical currents that run beneath it.
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Add this copy of Bitter Fruit to cart. $9.99, good condition, Sold by Tamworth Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from San Antonio, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2004 by Kwela Books.
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Will ship fast with care and email notification of estimated arrival! See my feedback. No markings or highlights found. Cover has light wear including creases on the front. Clean, crisp, bright pages. Binding is tight. Will ship fast with care and email notification of estimated arrival! See my feedback. No markings or highlights found. Cover has light wear including creases on the front. Clean, crisp, bright pages. Binding is tight.
Add this copy of Bitter Fruit to cart. $49.93, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Macmillan Co of Australia.
Add this copy of Bitter Fruit to cart. $52.00, very good condition, Sold by Chapter 1 Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA, published 2001 by Kwela Books.
Add this copy of Bitter Fruit to cart. $52.00, good condition, Sold by Chapter 1 Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA, published 2001 by Kwela.
Add this copy of Bitter Fruit to cart. $62.00, very good condition, Sold by Chapter 1 Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA, published 2001 by Kwela.
Add this copy of Bitter Fruit to cart. $80.00, very good condition, Sold by Chapter 1 Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA, published 2001 by Kwela Books.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good. The wraps are slightly shelf rubbed. Internally clean, besides occasional pencil annotations throughout the text. There is an author's inscription on the title page. Tightly bound and complete with 254 pages. [B.K. ]
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.
