Kafka’s Curse – Achmat Dangor

In Arabic legend, Majnoen, a simple gardener who dared to love a princess, was transformed into a tree. The legend warns against the madness of Majnoen – an insanity that strikes those who dare to stray from the path mapped out for them at birth.

Through the fractured lens of this ancient cautionary tale, Achmat Dangor reimagines South Africa and its troubled identities of culture, race and sex, creating contemporary fictions that illuminate our reality in startling ways. In the novella Kafka’s Curse he explores the fate of Omar Khan – also known as Oscar Kahn – in his journey from town- ship to suburb. The story ‘The Devil’ traces the diabolical career of an ordinary man, while ‘Lost’ shows us a writer losing and finding himself in a foreign city.

At the heart of Dangor’s book is the notion of metamorphosis. His characters are those who defy their ‘takdier’, the destiny ordained by religion, language and status, and engage in the difficult and dangerous struggle to change their natures. In the process, some turn into monsters, and some into beautiful hybrids in which we glimpse the puzzling new creatures of the future.

Dangor’s prose fits his themes perfectly: the language is intoxicatingly sensual, richly poetic, and steeped in the idiom of the street. His work blends history, parable and dream into a potent and beautiful new hybrid of its own.

Dangor’s new collection contains extraordinary work. Kafka’s Curse is a dense surrealist fable. This is the essence of the emerging South African version of ‘magic realism’, which could be described as ‘realistic fantasy’.