K. Sello Duiker (1974–2005)

"But we're not backward. Most of what you guys call progress, those are just things. They don't make your life any better, maybe quicker. But they don't make you better people, inside. That is real progress. Anyone can have things. You can't even take them with you when you die."

This is not an easy book to read. It delves into a lot of difficult and often uncomfortable topics. But wow, the author does this well. Some parts of the book feel a little rough and could maybe have been edited a little more, but Duiker conveys his message incredibly well. The story is dark and sad and broken in so many ways and we learn to see just how fractured all of the characters are. It is definitely worth a read, but be warned that it is dense (even with how long it is) and you my need something a little lighter to take breaks with.… (lisätietoja)

My review cannot begin to cover the complexity of this novel’s six-hundred pages. Set in Cape Town, this book is looks at post-apartheid society through the lens of sex, desire, and race. The main character here is Tshepo but the narrative is made up of alternating points of view of his friends and people he meets along the way at the psychiatric institution, his home, and work. The language is plain, almost like direct speech, and reads like multiple diaries because each chapter is first person POV.

A key part of the early sections of novel deal with Tshepo's struggle with mental illness and the horrible system that underlies "treatment". The author took his own life in 2005 when he was thirty. Reading about Tshepo's struggle with depression is particularly poignant in that light. Tshepo is an idealist, a sensitive dreamer, and has endured childhood trauma due to his father's criminal dealings. He is curious and can't adjust to society as he knows it. Part of the book is of him coming to terms with his desire for men, and what was interesting is the depiction of sex work as a means for him to do that.

There are long dialectical passages in this book about race, gender, sex, and mysticism. A lot of this involves conversations that Tshepo has with others. In allowing other characters to speak from their point of view, the novel is polyphonic and allows for competing or contradictory lines of thought. The mysticism aspect weakens the book, for me, but I also wonder if I’m not supposed to read it “straight” in that it’s meant to draw attention to Tshepo’s increasingly mentally erratic state after suffering personal loss. But perhaps it also indicates a way out of the nihilism that sometimes overtakes Tshepo. The struggle for spiritual meaning is linked to Tshepo's disillusionment with the world as it is (a lot of which I see as problems with capitalism), but with Tshepo there is a lot of back and forth about what to think about life, and how to think about life, so in a way it does remind me of 19th-century social novels.

The only female character in the novel is Mmabatho, dealing with an unstable relationship with a white German man and an unexpected pregnancy. She’s an interesting study; her feminism is brazen and she takes no shit from men, but her feminism is also portrayed as an elitist one, as she constantly trots out xenophobic and classist remarks about immigrants and “lesser” Africans like Nigerians, etc. It was, in a sense, an eye-opening view of elite South African society, but it also felt uncomfortably familiar--Malaysia has its own version of supposedly take-no-shit elitist feminism that overlooks problems of class.

Towards the end, Tshepo has a new job working at a children’s home and has acquired an easel but hasn’t started painting yet. He is in a state of flux, though he has attained some form of stability. I find the description of his waiting (waiting to express himself through art, in a sense) quite moving:

“It is beautiful, my easel. When the children come into my room, they always stare at it with wonder, too awestruck by this strange contraption to ask me what it is, what I do with it. But it is finding its own life, its own significance, like an ancestral mask. The wood breathes life into my room.”

And this:

“When I look at the children I work with, mostly black, with some coloured and white faces, I sense that God can’t be one story. He is a series of narratives.”

The novel is a hallucinatory read at times because of the simple, repetitive prose but to me it was effective and served the purpose of the way in which Duiker was trying to tell this story. I always felt deeply involved. It's a thought-provoking glimpse of South Africa and its myriad issues, a young man's search for meaning beyond the ugliness that the world offers.
… (lisätietoja)

A must read to all gay and not gay people, particulaly those still grappling to come to terms with the idea of homosexuality.
the story is about Tshepo who sufferrs from bouts of mental ilness and end up in Valkenberg hospital.
The author captures so vividly the experiences of young Tshepo who is trying to make sense of his illness, and the treatment meted out at mental hospital.

Tshepo, the main character gives account of his life events, both in the hospital and thereafter where he end up working at male massage parlour, and eventually coming to terms with his own sexuality
Anyone interested in knowing what "mental patient" are likely to be feeling and their experince at the institution are like will do justice to read the book.

Iterpersed with Tshepo's accounts of events are his friend- Mmabatho and other hosts of characters, who the author captures so well and one cannot stop wondering how talented this author WAS in capturing others thoughts, ideas and feelings.
The author captures excellently the turmoil that gay people find themselves and their battle in trying to just be understood, often leading them to explore risky avenues.

I caannot stop to reccomend this book to anyone interested in knowing what the feeling and experience of another man being attracted to and loving another is like

What a tragedy that the author had to take his own life. I often feel sad and dissapointed whenever I think of this. A great loss indeed to South African authors & litterature in general.… (lisätietoja)

A weird novel that changes from a very realistic beginning towards a surreal ending. Personally I didn't like the way the book changed, perhaps because I felt I lost grip on the story.

The story centres around Azure, an orphaned streetchild from Cape Town. The boy manages to stay alive by living according to his own strict rules and by going home with homosexual men. It's a rough and sad lifestory. At some stage Azure is confronted by a powerful street gangster who beats him up and abuses him in a terrible way. After that the story changes into a surrealistic tale in which Azure feels he is getting stronger, loses all what was left of his faith in mankind, climbs the Table mountain, has strange mythical dreams and dances in caves and nothing is the same any more.

The story just gets weirder and weirder. Perhaps you could say it changes from a novel into a poem. It is beautiful in a way, yet not completely satisfying.… (lisätietoja)