Bitter Fruit

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 20 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.