Praise

Praise the Bitter Fruit:

“Achmat Dangor … has always delved beyond the surface of human relations, from the intimately personal to the societal and political. This took courage, risk to his own personal life, during the apartheid era. At the same time he did not compromise a dedication to high literary standards in the use of language—he has the invaluable imaginative instinct of expressing his varied themes through the one form of narration and character creation that, in each novel, is equal to the theme. Freshness and bold vividness are qualities of his writing. … In the post-apartheid era, he has tackled, in Bitter Fruit, as in Kafka's Curse, with the honesty of his insight, the problems as well as the promised fulfillment of the enormous change that freedom brings about.”

—Nadine Gordimer

“Meticulously written and perfectly paced, the story … hints at an escape from history's tyranny.”

—Irish Times

“Dangor's vivid prose, narrative fluency and facility for literary experiment make Bitter Fruit a considerable achievement.”

—Daily Telegraph (London)

“The tensions, threats and insecurities of the new South Africa are refracted through the internal and sexual lives of the Ali family. … As this dense, painful and luxuriously written book carefully reveals itself, the racial conflicts still percolating through South Africa are pinpointed.”

—Metro (London)

“The unremitting intensity of Dangor's focus is just as notable as its depth.”

—Independent on Sunday (London)

“[Like] a ringside seat for witnessing the political, cultural and religious conflicts sweeping the Rainbow Nation.”

—The Guardian (London)

Praise for Kafka's Curse:

“Dangor's prose swirls with all the undercurrents of political and sexual tension, regrets and personal disillusionment. … It's not often that a poet can turn his attention to prose and create a work that succeeds in such a subtle manner, without silly tricks or sentimentality.”

—Austin Chronicle

“Entirely wonderful: delicious, moving, mysterious, wise and profoundly provocative.”

—Baltimore Sun

“A highly original meditation on the politics of love.”

—Boston Book Review

“Dangor's colloquial style is both immediate and poetic.”

—Booklist

“Extraordinary. A dense surrealist fable … This is the essence of the emerging South African version of ‘magic realism,’ which could be described as ‘realistic fantasy.’”

—Mike Nicol, author of The Ibis Tapestry

Title

Dedication

‘It is an old story – ours.

My father's and mine.’

William Shakespeare

Part One

Part One

Memory

I will teach you that there is nothing that is not divinely natural, … I will speak to you of everything.

André Gide, Fruits of the Earth

1

IT WAS INEVITABLE. One day Silas would run into someone from the past, someone who had been in a position of power and had abused it. Someone who had affected his life, not in the vague, rather grand way in which everybody had been affected, as people said, because power corrupts even the best of men, but directly and brutally. Good men had done all kinds of things they could not help doing, because they had been corrupted by all the power someone or something had given them.