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"Words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels."
Bitter Fruit
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Bitter Fruit
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This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
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A 2004 Christmas gift from Mr. goatgrrl, happily added to my TBR pile. (Photo: author Achmat Dangor)
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Set against the backdrop of the final days of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1998), Bitter Fruit tells the story of lawyer Silas Ali and his wife Lydia Oliphant, "coloured" activists (both of mixed ancestry) during the Apartheid era, now struggling to adjust to life under democracy.As Bitter Fruit begins, Silas -- whose government job involves liaison between the Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the South African Ministry of Justice -- has just encountered a figure from his past in a Johannesburg grocery store. Retired police lieutenant Francois du Boise raped Silas' wife Lydia nineteen years before (notionally as a warning to Silas and others in his anti-Apartheid activist "cell"), an act which -- we learn -- has had a profound impact on Silas and Lydia's marriage. Now du Boise has reappeared, first in the grocery store where Silas was shopping, then as an applicant for amnesty before the TRC (specifically naming Lydia as the victim of one of the acts for which he seeks amnesty). Silas and Lydia have an eighteen year old son, Michael, who learns of his mother's rape by reading her diary. Through this and other revelations, Michael's interest in his parents' past -- and along with it, the history of pre-liberation South Africa -- is engaged. Michael's response becomes the focus of the last, unhappy section of Bitter Fruit. Being interested in the subject of reconciliation (in the interpersonal sense, as well as in the larger transitional justice sense), I wanted to like this book more than I did. Instead I found it ponderous, heavy-handed and dogmatic in places, and my first impression -- that the "bad guy resurfaces, bringing with him unresolved yuck" plot seemed contrived and over-familiar -- remained more or less in place at the end. The recurrent theme of incest was out of place (it seemed odd to me, even as a metaphor), and the author's obsession with smell (specifically, that of women's sex organs) was distracting and weird. What I liked about the book was the glimpse it provided into post-TRC South Africa, as well as the focus on the history of "coloured" South Africans (i.e. those of South Asian ancestry, who under apartheid laws were distinguished from those designated "black"), about whom I've known very little. Read the Guardian's review of Bitter Fruit here, the Telegraph's here, the Independent's here and the African Review of Books' here. Bitter Fruit was shortlisted for the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. |
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Released 7 yrs ago (2/11/2005 UTC) at Burrard Sky Train Station in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada WILD RELEASE NOTES:
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