Kafka's Curse: A Novel - Softcover

Dangor, Achmat

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375704620 ISBN 13: 9780375704628

Publisher: Vintage, 2000

Synopsis

"Dangor writes lyrical...beautiful prose. Kafka's Curse is....full of cries that go on ringing in the head." --The New York Times Book Review

From 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.

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Review

South African poet Achmat Dangor's first novel is a rich blend of fairy tale and reality. At the heart of Kafka's Curse lies an Arab myth about a gardener who dared to love a princess and was turned into a tree for his presumption. A similar fate seems to have befallen Oscar Kahn, a Jewish South African architect. Abandoned by his wife after contracting a mysterious malady, he dies alone and his body is undiscovered for many months. By the time the neighbors call the police, "there wasn't much left of the body to bury. It was as if it had crumbled to dust." In the bedroom where Oscar breathed his last, a tree has sprouted up through the floor. But the riddle of this man's death is superceded by the secrets of his life: born Omar Kahn, he was, in fact, an Indian Muslim, not a white Jew. In the days of apartheid, these things mattered and Omar/Oscar, who had the temerity to disguise his ethnicity and to marry a white woman, had apparently paid the price for his subterfuge.

Omar's secret may be shocking to his friends and family, but his is by no means the only one. His wife, his nephew, his brother, even his therapist, all have things they'd prefer to keep hidden--but like pulling a loose thread on a very old and fragile seam, the revelation of Omar's past begins an unraveling of secrets and lies going back generations, with tragic results. Dangor tells his story with economy and grace, offering up love, madness, and betrayal in language as lovely as the themes are grim. --Alix Wilber

From the Back Cover

"Opens like a music box to a shiny intricate machinery and a sweet precise music, and it closes on a note of hope that can only cheer observers of South Africa's recent transformation into a multicultural democracy."--Boston Book Review

"Delicious, moving, mysterious, wise, and profoundly provocative."--The Baltimore Sun

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0375704620
• ISBN 13: 9780375704628
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240