Overview
"Dangor writes lyrical...beautiful prose. Kafka's Curse is....full of cries that go on ringing in the head." —The New York Times Book ReviewFrom the award-winning South African poet Achmat Dangor, an extraordinary American debut and an imaginative reinterpretation of an old Arabic fairy tale unfolds in five magical narratives set in post-apartheid South Africa.
Kafka's Curse is the story of Oscar Kahn (born Omar Khan), a "colored" Muslim architect passing as a Jewish man, married to a white woman, who eventually experiences a mysterious physical transformation, the likes of which no one can explain. As his brother Malik, a politician firmly rooted in Islam, tries to come to terms with his brother's betrayal, he abandons both his principles and his family when he falls in love with Amina, Omar's beautiful psychotherapist. With the hauntingly lyrical and rich allegory of Kafka's Curse, Achmat Dangor commands a position at the forefront of contemporary literature.
Editorials
Christopher Hope
...[A] rarity, a post-apartheid work of fiction....[that asks:] What happens to memories of the way we were?....Dangor writes lyrical, often beautiful prose that switches suddenly into blazing anger....a strange, tormented book, full of cries that go on ringing in the head.— The New York Times Book Review
Boston Book Review
Opens like a music box to a shiny intricate machinery and a sweet precise music, and it closes on a note of hope.Christopher Hope
...[A] rarity, a post-apartheid work of fiction....[that asks:] What happens to memories of the way we were?....Dangor writes lyrical, often beautiful prose that switches suddenly into blazing anger....a strange, tormented book, full of cries that go on ringing in the head.— The New York Times Book Review
Kirkus Reviews
South African poet Dangor's first US publication-an intricate blend of racial and sexual tensions, with a twist of Arabic legend thrown in-is set in the post-apartheid era, though the roots of its drama reach into the dismal South African past.In a bid to free himself of suicidal skeletons lurking in his ancestral closet, Omar Khan, as a young man, reinvented his persona. As the Jewish Oscar Kahn, the light-skinned Muslim found acceptance from the masters of apartheid, and so obtained a blond trophy wife, Anna, and a secure place in white society. But he paid a price for his deception: In time, a bizarre illness overtook him and, after Anna fled their house, turned him into a tree-as in the Arabic tale of a palace gardener suffering that fate for daring to love a princess. Anna's refuge with her brother Martin sours when his wife catches him molesting his youngest daughter, bringing back to Anna a flood of memories of him doing the same thing to her, so she takes her niece away to live with her. Meanwhile, Oscar's brother Malik, a severe, pious pillar of the Muslim community, finds his own life taking an unexpected turn. His wife moves out; and he begins a passionate affair with his brother's therapist, Amina, whose black skin he can't caress enough. Once he leaves her, his rejuvenated state doesn't last long: He deliberately puts himself in the way of a robber's gun. Anima works her charm for the last time by seducing Malik's son, coming between him and a girl whose light skin and hair, despite the dismantling of apartheid, still make her forbidden fruit of the kind Anna was a generation before.