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Overview
"The last time Silas Ali encountered the Lieutenant, Silas was locked in the back of a police van and the Lieutenant was conducting a vicious assault on Lydia, his wife. When Silas sees him again, by chance, crimes from the past erupt into the present, splintering the Ali's fragile family life." Bitter Fruit is the story of Silas, Mikey, and Lydia, a brittle family in a dysfunctional society. By turns harrowing, erotic and fearlessly satirical, it is a portrait of modern South Africa that also address questions of universal significance.Synopsis
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 twenty 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.
Library Journal
Dangor (Kafka's Curse), an antiapartheid activist in South Africa and now a UN official, sets his latest novel in the South Africa of the Mandela government. Silas Ali was a member of the ANC underground and is now a ministerial liaison to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). As the novel begins, Silas sees Du Boise, the policeman who raped Silas's wife, Lydia, 20 years earlier. When Silas tells Lydia about seeing Du Boise, it triggers a family crisis. Caught between the two worlds of pre- and postapartheid South Africa, the Alis are, like many of their friends, part of the establishment but with deep wounds from the apartheid system not likely to be healed by the TRC. For the Alis and for South Africa, reality has not lived up to the dream. While the dialog is a bit clich d and the characters are not well developed, readers will learn some history and gain a glimpse into the transformation taking place in South Africa. Short-listed for the 2004 Man Booker Prize, this title is recommended for all collections.-Rebecca Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.