Bitter Eden

by Tatamkhulu Afrika

This frank and beautifully written novel draws heavily on the author's World War II experiences as a captive in North Africa and a prisoner of war in Italy and Germany. Three men who see themselves as "straight" must negotiate the emotions that are brought to the surface by the physical closeness of survival in the male-only camps. The complex rituals of camp life and the strange loyalties and deep bonds between the men are compellingly depicted in this tender, bitter, powerful tale of lives inexorably changed and a war whose ending does not bring peace.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Historical Fiction, Queer, Classics, Gay, War

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Tatamkhulu Afrika was born Mohamed Fu'ad Nasif in Egypt to an Egyptian father and a Turkish mother, and came to South Africa as a very young child. Both his parents died of flu, and he was fostered by family friends under the name John Charlton.

He fought in World War II in the North African Campaign and was captured at Tobruk, his experiences as a prisoner of war featuring prominently in his writing.

After World War 2 he left his foster family, and went to Namibia (then South-West Africa), where he was fostered by an Afrikaans family, taking his third legal name of Jozua Joubert.

In 1964 he converted to Islam and his name was again legally changed to Ismail Joubert. He lived in Cape Town's District 6, a mixed race inner-city community. District 6 was declared a "whites only" area in the 1960s and the community was destroyed. With an Arab father and a Turkish mother, Afrika could have been classified as a "white", but refused as a matter of principle.

He founded Al-Jihaad to oppose the destruction of District Six and apartheid in general, and when this affiliated with the African National Congress' armed wing. Umkhonto We Sizwe, he was given a praise name of Tatamkhulu Afrika, which he adopted until he died.

In 1987 he was arrested for terrorism and banned from speaking or writing in public for five years, although he continued writing under the name of Tatamkhulu Afrika.

He was imprisoned for 11 years in the same prison as Nelson Mandela, and was released in 1992.

Tatamkulu Afrika died shortly after his 82nd birthday, from injuries received when he was run over by a car two weeks before, just after the publication of his final novel, Bitter Eden. He left a number of unpublished works, including his autobiography, two novels, four short novels, two plays and poetry.

Reviews

[Orsodimondo · Rating 5 out of 5]

FRANCIS BACON


Francis Bacon: Tre studi di Muriel Belcher, 1966 (collezione privata).

Ispirato dall’esperienza personale di prigioniero di guerra durante la seconda mondiale, Paradiso amaro è la storia di due soldati, Tom e Danny, che per tre anni vissero prigionieri, prima degli italiani e poi dei tedeschi, divennero amici, e anche più, vicini e avvinghiati in un luogo dove:
la morte per fame è uno spettro non più lontano della faccia del mio vicino, e il suo alito sa di cadavere.


Francis Bacon: Ritratto di George Dyer allo specchio, 1968 (Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza).

E dopo questa bella esperienza, Tatamkhulu Afrika che non si fece mancare nulla, si ‘regalò’ anche undici anni nella stessa prigione di Nelson Mandela (Robbeneiland)

Tatamkhulu Afrika ha uno splendido nome, un nome forte, potente, che ha spessore, peso e corpo.

Come la sua scrittura, che forse perché abituata alla poesia, non perde tempo, scava, s’immerge, va all’osso, e al sangue (quanto sangue può contenere un corpo scheletrico?), e come i ritratti di Camel, uno dei personaggi del romanzo (non certo memoir), non è interessata alla pelle, ma a ritrarre quello che c’è sotto la pelle, il vero io, quello che si nasconde, che non si vuole far vedere.


Francis Bacon: ritratto di Papa Innocenzo X, 1953. Il quadro è una rivisitazione/deformazione di quello di Diego Velázquez del 1650, che peraltro sembra che Bacon non volle mai vedere: essendo il pittore irlandese leggermente ossessionato da questo soggetto, lo riprodusse più volte, questa è una delle 45 versioni esistenti.

E come non pensare immediatamente al meraviglioso pittore irlandese, e ai suoi ritratti scarnificati, ai visi e corpi che vengono maciullati, appaiono spasmodicamente tumefatti, bistrattati e mutilati, riflessi del male che attanaglia l'interiorità, rovesciando all’esterno l’intimo groviglio esistenziale.

Sono tanti i ‘quadri’ di queste pagine che rimangono nella memoria e che neppure le lacrime finali sciolgono via.

Ma poi, anche nell’ambiente squallido e brutale dei campi per prigionieri di guerra, si formano legami che vanno oltre la necessità, che superano le convenzioni della sessualità, in un delicato equilibrio, e quando i corpi si avvicinano, per riscaldarsi, per rinsaldarsi, le pelli diventano addirittura due, la seconda è quella dell’amico che ti stringe in un abbraccio, si avviluppa e si mischia a te.


Francis Bacon: ritratto di Papa Innocenzo X, 1953. L’originale, questo, è conservato al Des Moines Art Center di Des Moines negli USA.

E chissà, forse il corpo di Tatamkhulu Afrika da giovane era come il suo nome: le immagini che riesco a trovare sono solo quelle di un vecchio dalla barba bianca e l’espressione di chi ne ha passate tante, molto diverso da come immagino Tom e Danny, i protagonisti di questo romanzo.

Tatamkhulu Afrika è un nome di battaglia, il quinto che ha collezionato, perché ha vissuto tante vite, prima e dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, che è al centro di ‘Paradiso amaro’, tra cui anche tanti anni di carcere.
Mogamed Fu'ad Nasif, John Charlton, Jozua Joubert, Ismail Joubert, e infine Tatamkhulu Afrika, che morì investito da una macchina pochi giorni dopo aver visto questa parte del suo corpo pubblicata.


Francis Bacon: Tre studi di Muriel Belcher, 1966 (collezione privata).

[Bren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is such a strange hidden gem. Let's start with the author's life story. His Egyptian parents moved to South Africa and died in a flu epidemic when he was very young. He was then raised by a white family who told him nothing about his origins, and called him John. At 17 he wrote his first novel, which was published in the UK, but almost all the copies of the book were destroyed in the bombings of WW2. Meanwhile, he volunteered, fought in North Africa, and spent three years in POW camps in Italy and Germany. He wrote another novel in the camps, which a guard destroyed. When he returned to South Africa, his politicization began with becoming a Muslim, taking on the middle name Ismael, and getting himself racially reclassified as "Malay" (apartheid racial classification systems: let's just say that that's a byzantine story of its own). He eventually joined the armed wing of the ANC, and was given the name Tatamkhulu Afrika (grandfather Africa), of which he was very proud. He was imprisoned twice by the regime, and in prison he began to write poetry. By the time apartheid ended, he had quite a reputation as a (by this time) blind freedom fighter turned poet. Then, in his eighties, he finally succeeded in publishing a novel, a version of the book he wrote in the POW camps: Bitter Eden. He died two weeks later, having been hit by a car, leaving behind huge amounts of unpublished writing, including his memoir, the wonderfully named Mr. Chameleon. And the deeply autobiographical Bitter Eden, it turns out, is a gripping story of love between two men. DON’T READ ON IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS! The story is told from the perspective of post-apartheid South Africa, when the aged, married narrator, Tom, receives a letter from an Englishman, Danny, who was in the camps with him years ago, and who is apparently now on his deathbed. This leads to his remembrances of their time together. It is a somewhat triangular love story, because at first the narrator, Tom, pairs up with a fellow prisoner called Douglas-but Tom finds his mild effeminacy and barely disguised desire repulsive, despite Douglas' kindness. And then he meets beautiful, butch Danny, sunbathing nude and clearly interested in him, and throws over Douglas pretty quickly. The two manly men quickly agree to be "mates," but not of course like the "funnies." While the story of surviving the camps is compelling (from the horrific bedbugs of Italy to the marches through the snow in Germany in the chaotic aftermath of peace being declared) the central drama is that of Tom's struggle to come to terms with his love and desire for Danny, and his hatred for Douglas, and what these mean about who he is. The narrative combines brutal self-examination with intense disavowal in quite a unique way. Tom's anxieties about his masculinity are of course the norm for the time (and indeed ours!) but they are sharpened by the fact that his father sexually abused him when he was a child, something that he and Danny have in common. Tom attains a certain amount of self-knowledge when he plays the role of Lady Macbeth in a production the prisoners put on, and discovers that the female garb, and the queer femininity of the role itself, unleash a repressed side of himself. However, he is still cruel to Douglas, who ends up going insane, and is put in the camp asylum. Douglas is eventually killed in the following disturbing scene, as the Germans are taking the prisoners out of the Italian camp: ‘ "Hello there!" he calls, his voice coy as a girl's…I wrench my eyes away and pretend I do not hear, but he persists and a quick glance sickens me with the sight of his now coquettishly fluttering hand. "Fuck off!" I at last yell, ignoring Danny's restraining grip on my arm, the whole of me shuddering with nausea and rage, and Douglas seems able to hear me as clearly as I am hearing him, because he at once unleashes a torrent of spectacular abuse. Do they, too, hear-these two SS men strutting past...or were they bound for the madhouse anyway?...the shots come, and continue till the shrieking stops, but there is one who is still alive, and he slips past... and is bolting out from behind the cell and into us, his hair flaring like his flaring eyes, and we are all making way for him, but more in a fearing for our own lives than in any nobler urge, and they pump him full of bullets as he hurtles into the camp fence and claws, despairingly, at it and lies there...even our guards stay silent as ourselves, as the no-doubt blood-drenched madhouse from whose window-as from every other window-Douglas' tormented image has forever been expunged.’ Obviously the SS guards enact what Tom has wanted all along: for Douglas' disturbingly queer image to be ‘expunged.’ But the brutality of his death, and Tom's sense of his own complicity in it, mean that Douglas, and the abjected effeminacy he embodies, will continue to haunt Tom. Douglas might perhaps have haunted him anyway, as the specter of everything that Tom fears about himself. What redeems the book, if not Tom, is the stark honesty of its portrayal of how normative masculinity requires the denial of homosexuality and the abjection of femininity; and the denial of desire, at least, is unsustainable. The book builds a lot of tantalizing suspense around Danny and Tom slowly growing closer to confessing their feelings for one another and expressing them physically; at one point, for example, when they hear that Italy has been defeated (not knowing the horrors still to come in Germany) they kiss spontaneously in the crowd, and take another emotional step later that night: ‘Some hours before dawn, the camp at last stills...and Danny and I, tipsy as any and meeting again after having been parted by the crowd, help each other up onto my bunk where we lie together, grinning into each other's faces like lobotomized fools. Then the grins fade as we succumb to what we have all the time suppressed-the knowledge that our freedom is synonymous with our separation, that, within days, maybe even in the morning, we will be parted to be flown, or shipped, back to where we belong, the oceans endlessly between. "So the bitter Eden ends," I think, "so fucking soon," and I feel my mouth twist and he touches it with as grieving a hand. Then we turn into each other, breath to breath, and sleep, entwined.’ Later, Danny makes Tom swear that if one of them dies, the other will kill himself, and he saves Tom’s life in Germany. But it is only after the war, in a brief period in England before Tom has to go back to South Africa, that Danny really declares himself. One of the pleasures of the book is the way that the reader can see that Danny returns Tom’s feelings long before Tom does; Danny says, in the face of Tom’s shame about his obvious desire for Danny as they are lying naked in the grass after a swim (all very E.M. Forster!), “No! Face up to it, mate! All that time back there, you were lying to me and to yourself about what was going on, saying this, saying that, pretending that nothing had changed, but he,” and he flicks my penis into full erection with a finger and thumb, “is telling you what you and me always knew.” But Tom is too cowardly, and does not return to England as he has promised Danny. Its pretty heartbreaking, especially when you consider that its so autobiographical, that in a way Afrika chose to fight for another country-democratic South Africa-instead of choosing love. I think you could read this book as one that tells the story of WW2 in a completely new way, rather like Andrea Levy's Small Island; or as a very post-apartheid novel; or as a book that's sort of homeless.

[Dana · Rating 2 out of 5]

With apologies to Mr. Afrika, since this is an autobiographical novel, I have to say I found the characters in this book utterly unsympathetic. Considering the time period, homophobia is to be expected, but the sheer amount of gay panic and denial is exhausting.

[Levi Huxton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two men lie naked, pressed together in a small bunk, emaciated and exhausted by fear, clinging for warmth, comfort and companionship. Around them other prisoners sleep fretfully in a cold tent, one of many, circled by fences and wire, deep within enemy territory, in a war seemingly without end.

The embrace is complex. The relentless dehumanisation of war and incarceration has eaten away at the men’s flesh, their identity, their soul. That bodily warmth is the last thread to what remains of their humanity as one by one, others go insane or die. Yet, having grown up in the first half of last century, the embrace rejects every definition of manhood handed down to the soldiers by their fathers, their peers, or the army in which they serve.

That dissonance means their feelings for one another may take years to crystallise, by which point the physiological and psychological ravages of war may have erased any chance of lasting happiness.

This knowledge is what makes the fleeting, conflicted embrace so poignant, devastatingly so from our contemporary vantage. The South African writer’s experience as a POW was first captured in what he calls a “massive novel”, found and destroyed by the S.S. when the prisoners moved camp. It took five decades before Tatamkhulu Afrika returned to the story, writing Bitter Eden shortly before his death in 2002. It now has the feel of a classic.

The prose is crude but poetic, simultaneously raw and tender. The first person narration gives 1940s masculinity an authentic voice, one that shifts almost imperceptibly as Sergeant Tom Smith grapples with his feelings, first for Douglas, a nurse who mothers him through the indignities of capture, then for Danny, a married man who’ll happily kick the daylights out of anyone who might be “that way”.

My favourite passages were about the makeshift queer-run theatre productions that provide entertainment in the camp. The rites of the camp – 1940s men doing laundry, say – confuse gender roles, but nowhere more explicitly than on that stage, where men are asked to perform women’s parts. The three plays produced over the course of the story, including a fiery Macbeth, make for thoughtful examinations of the redemptive power of art and performance in surfacing identity and humanity.

The sexual identities described in Bitter Eden are unique to their aberrant environment, not easy to categorise (how we love to label desire and identity in our enlightened present!). It is partly what makes this book so haunting, distilling as it does our humanity to its very essence, the connections we forge with fellow humans despite the barriers erected between us, and which together add up to the opposite of war.

[Krodì80 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una sensualità ferina, una fisicità copiosa, dirompente e sofferta riempiono questo indelebile, ardito romanzo di Tatamkhulu Afrika, scrittore e poeta sudafricano che, pressoché ottantenne, ha dato alle stampe Paradiso amaro, opera ispirata alla sua esperienza di prigioniero durante la seconda guerra mondiale. Raccontata in prima persona, la storia si incentra sulle vicende di tre uomini - Tom (io narrante), Douglas e Danny -, che si ritrovano nei campi di prigionia per soldati in Italia e poi in Germania, e in questo doloroso e difficile microcosmo di soli uomini cercano di propugnare e affermare, a sé stessi ma soprattutto agli altri, la loro condizione di normali, che invece comincia gradualmente a entrare in conflitto con una strisciante, brulicante, impetuosa natura che sta per sbocciare, deflagrando. Unembroidered, senza fronzoli, è stata definita dalla critica anglosassone la scrittura dell’autore sudafricano; ma la forte tempra stilistica del poeta gli ha forse insegnato a ponderare la frase, a cesellare sapientemente le parole, che irrompono in una fisicità così animalesca, conturbante e, sovente, spietata, tale da rendere questa ambigua storia d’amore estenuante, disturbante e struggente al tempo stesso. Le pagine trasudano corpi, sofferenza, umiliazioni, dolori ma soprattutto l’insinuarsi, il germinare incontrollabile di sentimenti, di nuove prospettive, allettanti e allarmanti, che costringono i protagonisti a una dissociante lotta per l’autoaffermazione, che implicherà peraltro l’irreversibile perdizione e alienazione di uno di essi. Esemplare è il modo in cui l’affilata penna di Tatamkhulu Afrika tratteggia la storia fra Tom e Danny, indimenticabile nella sua complessa, virile passionalità. Questo breve romanzo riafferma, con insolita intensità, una verità feroce e inoppugnabile che, spesso, si impara troppo tardi: meglio forse vivere di rimorsi, che di rimpianti. Meglio ancora il Paradiso amaro, che il rassicurante purgatorio della quotidianità. Magnifico

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Debated between a 4 and 5 star rating - eventually upped it to the higher one, since there is really NOTHING else quite like this novel. The author's own fascinating backstory, and the fact this autobiographical work detailing Afrika's harrowing years as a POW in both Italy and Germany during WW2 was published right before his passing, also influenced my rating. My quibbles had to do with the poetical language, which sometimes slowed this down to a very slow slog, and often I would have to re-read passages just to understand what was going on. Therefore, it took me an inordinately long time to get through such a short book.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second book I've read recently that has to do with soldiers who happen to fall in love with each other, so I will probably mention Days Without End a few times. Forgive me!

First, Afrika's writing is beautiful, complex and in both meaning and syntax, and often a bit difficult to parse. He's fond of the very long, often very introspective, sentence:

Emotion never fails to seize me then, shake me like a puppy a ball or doll, and I try to tell myself that it is anger that I feel, though I know it is pain, otherwise why is there in me such a clear relief that he has, seemingly, stopped his daily shambling round the fence and spared me the turning away that anger surely should have reversed? (p. 94)

The style takes some getting used to, but it's well-rewarding once you've mastered it. Afrika has a knack for simile that is surpassed by no one I've read recently.

His characters, too, are just as complex as his syntax. This is especially true for the narrator, Tom, and Danny, the soldier he meets in a prisoner of war camp. Their relationship -- its slow bloom and their reactions to is -- is so nuanced, so detailed, and so realistic that it's no surprise this is a semi-autobiographical novel. The characters are human, flawed, prone to irrational actions and victim to their culture's prejudices, and this makes them even more sympathetic as they navigate their burgeoning affections. The book becomes a spyglass into the not-entirely-dated mindset of ostensibly heterosexual men as they loosen into same-sex love in all its myriad incarnations.

This is, however, a book about prisoners of war based on a real-life experience as one. It is, therefore, not light reading. There is violence, blood and gore, and true to Afrika's depiction of his characters, the blood and gore is detailed and addressed head-on, so if you have a light stomach or a fragile disposition, you may want to prepare for yourself. I myself do not handle violence well, and some of the passages, albeit short, were a struggle for me to finish.

Sebastian Barry's Days Without End suffered from this same fate, of being a book whose main purpose was to depict a relationship but also had to detail some truly horrific actions perpetrated by people at war. The difference, though, is one of proportion: Afrika's book truly does focus on the relationship between the two soldiers, never shying away from physical affection, whereas Barry's book feels more about the wars than about the love between the two men. This may have to do with the authors themselves: Afrika was a PoW who presumably experienced a love similar to the one lived by his characters. Barry, on the other, is as far as I know a "traditional" heterosexual man, although one with a gay child. Regardless, the books feel very different, despite sharing a similar topic.

Ultimately, I have very little negative to say about Afrika's novel. There is mention in the book of the characters' abusive past, which rubbed me the wrong way. It felt tacked on, unnecessary, and any time I see an abused character "becoming" gay, I get a little defensive, so this may be more of a personal thing than anything else. Finally, the book ends very ambiguously -- you know from the first page the two men do not end up together, but I would have liked to get a bit more detail about their lives after the war... and also of Danny's intention with the bequest! (This will make sense to you once you read the book... and you should!)

Personal story: I've had this book on my amazon wish list for years, and I never bought it because it was always full price, and as a person who prefers happy reading, a PoW story didn't seem like a good investment. A few days ago, though, buying cheap Kleenex at the Dollar Tree, I found the book in a pile of trashy romances, disturbingly specific cookbooks, and Christian fiction.

It was the best dollar I have ever spent. (Even at $26, this sucker is worth it. Pick it up!)

[charlotte, · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rep: South African achillean mc

CWs: homophobia, assault, gore, implied child sexual abuse

[Márcio · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5/5

“Paraíso amargo” (Bitter Eden) foi uma leitura que me fez variar bastante minha consideração quanto à escrita de Tatamkhulu Afrika. Se até 1/3 da leitura eu considerava-o digno de algo entre 3 e 3,5 estrelas, a partir daí o seu desenvolvimento me conquistou e muito.

Mais do que um romance que trabalha as memórias vividas por seu autor na 2ª Guerra Mundial, "Paraíso amargo" pode ser lido também como um estudo sobre as relações humanas em situações extremas. No caso, a vida em campos de prisioneiros durante uma guerra.

A história é narrada por Tom Smith, sargento sul-africano com origens ciganas, capturado com parte do seu grupo pelas forças italianas e transportados para um acampamento de prisioneiros de guerra. Desde um pouco após sua captura é ajudado por outro soldado que na vida civil era enfermeiro, Douglas. Desenvolvem uma relação de companheirismo, embora não de toda de bom grado, pois Tom se ressente muitas vezes da forma maternal/marital que Douglas implicitamente lhe impõe, como se sentisse prisioneiro dentro de outra prisão.

A relação dos dois, que era amistosa no que era possível, torna-se cada vez mais difícil e tensa quando entra em cena um soldado britânico, Danny, que acolhe Tom numa amizade misturada a camaradagem e implicitamente plena de tensão sexual. Implicitamente, porque se trata de uma questão tabu num meio e numa época em que papeis sexuais e atitudes definiam o desejo, definindo uma pessoa como hétero ou homossexual, quando na verdade o desejo não define uma pessoa, é apenas uma parte do ser.

É a partir de então que se desenvolvem os conflitos entre os três personagens. É também a partir de então que questões que envolvem sexualidade, gênero, a construção de relacionamentos em condições de confinamento e as situações extremas ali vivenciadas, etc., são ainda mais dimensionadas.

Em razão do tema da guerra, o livro nem sempre se traduz numa leitura fácil, a violência e as crueldades humanas muitas vezes são graficamente descritas, principalmente no campo alemão para o qual são transferidos. Há uma constante degradação daqueles homens à medida que as condições da guerra pioram. Em especial, há uma degradação psicológica contínua que ocorre em Douglas após a separação de Tom, com resultados trágicos.

Mas também há cenas imensamente tocantes, algumas explícitas, outras, sugeridas. Não é apenas uma história de guerra, de conflitos humanos vividos em situações extremas, mas é também uma história de amor, desse paraíso amargo que Tom anseia que se torne num paraíso doce junto à Danny, embora tenha noção de sua utopia. Também poderia ser uma história de reconciliação e de aceitação de si mesmo como se é, mas Tom tem noção dos limites que o seu tempo impunha às pessoas.

Em tempo, esse é o tipo de livro que faz necessário que o leitor se reporte a um passado que embora seja recente, descreve situações, condições, sociedade, preceitos morais diferentes daqueles que atualmente vivemos. Portanto, lê-lo com os olhos de hoje, sem o esforço de compreender os limites sociais e morais da época em que a narração ocorre, apenas ocasionaria discussões rasas, como considerar Tom um homem odioso pelas suas atitudes e escolhas, em especial aquelas que resultam na gradual destruição de Douglas.

Esse é um daqueles livros que após a conclusão da leitura permanece. Basta relembrar alguns de seus trechos e as emoções da leitura surgem com força, revigoradas, como se tivessem sido lidos há poucos momentos.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some time in my mid-twenties I realized that I had been holding two completely separate ideas of self in my mind, somehow believing both and neither. So I have come to love stories that explore those separations where we hide parts of ourselves from ourselves. This book told one of those stories masterfully.

The first thirty pages were hard for me to concentrate on, and then I was suddenly wrapped up in the book, shocked at having to reenter the modern world when it ended. I especially love the title, the power embedded in calling a POW camp an Eden. I also love the narrator's ability to hold back even from himself, and the author's ability to use that to further our understanding of him. And the exploration of masculinity. And the historical narrative. And the great truth in fiction. And I already want to read it again.

[Chrissy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book through GoodReads. Although the book is an autobiographical work, I found it to be a difficult read. There was no structure to it and it read like a very long meandering poem full of sexual symbolism. I appreciate the experiences that the charcters survived and was disgusted by the treatment of the mentally ill prisoners, but I really could not relate to the characters, Afrika kept his cards close and I never really got a sense of who he really was.
A love story, a life story and a tale of war horrific to acknowledge, Afrika does address the issue of lonliness and homosexuality as a result of proximity in prisons. At times touching, sometimes confusing and entertaining as well, Bitter Eden has left me wanting.

[Gail Cooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raw, powerful, tender, honest Bitter Eden is not an easy book to read due to the suffering men endure in prisoner of war camps. Yet at times it is heroic when we see the best in humankind as these imprisoned men seek to comfort their fellows amidst illness, hunger, deprivation and violence. Afrika does not spare his readers in this autobiographical novel of life in a World War II POW camp. His descriptions are graphic, often painfully so, which in part accounts for the book's strength and the indelible impressions it leaves on one's mind.

First published in Britain in 2002 Bitter Eden describes the emotions that arise among men who find themselves in dire circumstances. They are in a place where a mate or friend is necessary for survival. Our narrator is Tom Smith who was captured by the Germans in 1941, and sent to camps in Italy and Germany. Initially Tom is pursued by fellow prisoner Douglas Summerfield who looks after him, jealously guards him, mothers him, and on the first night there with a roof of sorts over their heads Douglas finds "a double body's length of sand we can call `his' and `mine,' there is an appearance of domesticity of a home..."

While Tom appreciates Douglas's care of him the continual "fussiness" becomes a bother, especially when he meets Danny a rugged, well-toned individual, a former boxer. The two develop a relationship which causes Douglas pain and jealousy.

Relief from the dullness and deprivations of camp life is sometimes found in Shakespearean plays put on by Tony, an openly gay POW. In addition there are the Red Cross rations (cigarettes!) which gives the POWs things to barter.

Bitter Eden is a short book, only 234 pages yet it brilliantly captures the range of emotions as men fight to maintain their humanity while existing in the most deplorable conditions. It is a novel that will not be forgotten.

[Cristal Hougham · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won this book in a "first-reads" giveaway.

I was not able to finish reading this book. I made it to page 76. It had really good potential. I was intrigued by the subject matter and I think that if the right person reads it that it would be a great book. It just wasn't for me. First off, I hated that there was no chapters whatsoever in the book. It just kept going and going and going. There were some beautifully written passages in the book but the bad outweighed the positive for me.

[Vika · Rating 3 out of 5]

based on the intriguing description i expected this book to be about straight men's bonding in a war camp leading them to unforeseen places. instead it was another 20th century queer classic-adjacent novel a la giovanni's room about closeted queer men's internalized homophobia that exacerbated in an all-male environment with a healthy dose of period-typical (?) misogyny. analyzing it with regard to historical context etc would probably be much more fun than just following its generic characters on their sad (but at least admittedly short) journey

the combination of lush poetic prose and honest descriptions of often quite disgusting living conditions and circumstances in the camp made for a very weird read. the best thing about bitter eden are its first and last sentences - although, depending on how you look at it, they put the rest of the book in an even worse light: the iconic first sentence promises a sweeping melancholic story that the novel fails to deliver and the last line makes you regret that the characters' relationship wasn't convincing enough for it to pack the intended punch🤷‍♀️😒

[Alvaro Perez-Quintero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Homophobia is a prison.

Quite a fascinating book about prisoners of war refusing to give in t their feelings because of internalized homophobia. It's interesting how much of the book is dedicated to he interpersonal lives of the prisoners, their petty squabbles and weird attachments, instead of the misery of their surroundings.

Most of the characters are infuriating but still interesting to read about. The writing is great, often erotic and often gross. And there's really some intriguing stuff here about gender roles, masculinity, homophobia and more.

Music for this book:
Nagmusiek - Arnold van Wyk

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"There is a silence in which still unsaid words jostle behind our tongues like surplus passengers trying to cram into an already-crowded train"

"I touch the scar on my cheek and it flinches as though the long-dead tissue had a Lazarus-life of its own."

"It is his gun."

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s difficult to read about tragic, doomed gay love stories these days, but I can’t fault the author for writing a book based on his own experiences (as a POW during WWII). At times, I found the prose a bit smothering because it was so flowery that it obscured the plot. In spite of this, Bitter Eden grabbed me by the heart. The characters were deeply moving and wrecked me in the way that only a good book can.

[Ruben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soms lees je een boek omdat het algoritme dat zo heeft besloten voor je en de beschrijving wel goed lijkt te passen bij een opdracht voor de studie. Na een paar dagen lezen weet ik eigenlijk niet hoe ik hier een goed paper over kan schrijven, wat ik wel weet is dat ik nog nooit een boek zoals dit gelezen heb. Dit soort boeken komen heel weinig voor en het lezen van zo’n verhaal als dit ben ik niet gewend. Dat maakt het alsmaar moeilijker, maar ook zeer waardevol.

“This is not an ending, mate. This is a beginning”

[Ericka Seidemann · Rating 1 out of 5]

I made it to page 70 and I’m understanding less and less. I appreciate the horror of what these men are going through, and I really wanted to absorb Tata’s story, but the obfuscation, slang, and complete lack of explanation of the environment or circumstances just left me too bewildered.

[Paul P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heart-moving, amazing story of two soldiers fighting for the allies in WWII who form a deep and romantic friendship. Based on actual events and superbly written. This book really touched me. I would love to read more by Tatamkhulu Africa, and I plan to reread this book one day.

[clemens · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5:
This last paragraph felt like a whiplash and I still feel the pain in my heart…

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

dacht dat m’n Engels prima was maar hier hoorde ik toch ff m’n hersens kraken

[Franz Paul Cabuquit · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was rather a short read, started it yesterday and finished it today (jun 23)

it is a historical fiction—set during war, mostly in war camps—that observes the behaviors and the relationships that develop between men who regard and think of themselves as "straight/hetero", given the dire situation that they find themselves in.

although the writing may get quite inconsistent (it can be irregularly light and complex), the story and theme were still portrayed very well. the writing is raw, honest, and sincere. however, i would have liked it more if the book ended not in the way it ended, which honestly was the way that i thought it would end. i guess it could have ended in a relatively better and positive note, since the original ending felt quite a bit too sudden and too out of the blue.

the book is an exploration and observation of masculinity, of gender stereotypes, about mens' perception and attitude towards queerness, the unpredictability of sexual identity, denying and questioning oneself, the nuanced connections that develop between men of war, and more.

the book mainly leaves us this: people may get too engrossed in seeking and yearning for the "sweet eden" and the idea of such, hence leading to their forgetting the essence of the "bitter eden" that they're currently living. and so when the time comes that they do get to that sweet eden, they realize that it was that very bitter eden, which have already passed, that have long been giving them the sweetness they so yearn for.

[Sequelguerrier · Rating 4 out of 5]

I unhesitatingly filch (quote) the synopsis provided by reviewer Benjamin on amazon.com, since he has done a very good job at summarising the story:

QUOTE Young South African soldier Tom Smith (Thomas Aloysius Smythe) is a prisoner of war initially taken by the Italians. At his capture a fellow prisoner, the rather prissy Douglas, latches on to him and takes an almost motherly interest in him. But later when a new prisoner, Danny, takes an interest in Tom, conflicts of loyalty arise. But that is just the first of many conflicts the men will encounter during their imprisonment.UNQUOTE

Bitter Eden is a story about the relationships between men who while they consider themselves straight, face the conflicting emotions that result from being closely confined under the most difficult conditions. When men build such close friendships, so close that they come to depend upon each other for day to day survival, for the closeness of shared body heat through freezing nights, it inevitably leads to confusions which can be betrayed by the bodies own natural responses. It is this confusion that is so convincingly portrayed that forms the backbone of the story.

The story is written by a man who was a soldier and PoW himself for three years and,even if he writes nearly 50 years after the experience, it has the ring of an extraordinary directness and truth when he speaks of the relationships between the men. Tatamkhulu (Grandfather) Afrika was a very old man when he wrote Bitter Eden but the voices of his main characters Tom and Danny are as you would expect from very young men who have been thrown together in the abnormal situation that is war and imprisonment. The emotions are raw and direct, the unspoken love at times heart breaking at others beautiful in its almost innocence. This is as far from a story that seeks to titillate as you can get, but the few moments of physical contact that are described are of an immediacy that draws you in and that took my breath away. And even while the voice is young, there is another tone underlying it like the bass providing the continuum to the melody. It is more elusive, consisting all at once of the wisdom of one who has lived through much, of a certain weariness of the spirit that rings entirely just also for those weary PoWs and finally of a voice that regrets but does not judge even when it is critical of itself.

I have just finished reading these 233 pages in one go and I'm still reeling from the enigmatic and powerful end that leaves it almost entirely to you to make up what it might mean. For me it is acceptance, forgiving and finally love. This is quite easily the most compelling and deeply moving story of soldiers and the extraordinary relationship between them that I have read in a long time.

[Syed Waqar Bukhari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately I lost my copy today. Just read 150 pages of it. I think story is a bit boring.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, sad, and also fascinating, since the story is apparently based on the author's own experiences as a POW in WWII.

SPOILER ALERT: I am now going to discuss the story, so if you don't want to know, read the book instead of this review.

The narrator first allows himself to be taken care of by another man he sees as effeminate, but decent and caring. Then he falls in love with another "straight" guy, who sets out to take him away from the decent-but-effeminate guy, and succeeds. The effeminate guy eventually goes off the deep end as a result. I won't cover the rest of the story, except to say it is disturbing, sweet, and sad in many ways. However, I am horrified by the treatment of the discarded partner, even though it is presumably what really happened. In some ways, I suppose the story needs an example of what the two lovers are afraid of becoming, so that if it did not happen, the author might have needed to add this character and his tragic fate. But maybe because I know that was not the fate of all queers, even back then, some part of me rebels at seeing the story play out this way, as it has played out in so many books, movies, and justifications for homophobia ("they have such sad lives," etc.) and I don't want it to show up in a book that I would like to recommend to other readers. Oh well, I am still glad I read it, and you might be, too.

[Ffiamma · Rating 4 out of 5]

sono fortunata ad avere amici colti che mi regalano libri come questo: duro e poco sentimentale, pur essendo una storia d'amore (ambientata nei campi di prigionia italiani e tedeschi)ma pieno di umanità. scritto in maniera scarna, racconta l'essenziale: la miseria quotidiana, le umiliazioni, i piccoli trucchi per la sopravvivenza- ma anche la vita, l'amicizia, il vero volto che inevitabilmente esce fuori, qualche sprazzo di libertà assoluta che non sarà più possibile nella vita *normale* e il paradiso amaro del titolo diventa, fino a un certo punto, l'unica realtà possibile per essere se stessi fino in fondo. un gioiello.

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s frustrating to read these kinds of gay novels nowadays—bleak romances without a happy ending. But given the setting of the book, it’s hard to imagine a different story could have been told. That said, Danny stole my heart as quickly and as easily as he stole the narrator’s.

The language here is poetic and moving and breathtakingly beautiful. At times, the writing is so lyrical that I struggled to know what was actually happening, but I was always impressed at the author’s masterful command of the written word.

[Dimity Monroe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why are the well-written gay books with superior prose always so, damn, sad.
This is the story of relationships between men who were prisoner's of war during World War II. It has a masculine tone, a heartbreaking ending and a very intense last page. I read this in one day while sick with the flu and then cried myself to sleep.
A profound book and probably a hard one to write, as it was based on the actual experiences of it's author, Tatamkhulu Afrika.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engaging story and one that found hard to put down. It is a story of World War II and the time that the author spent as a prisoner of war and the profound effect this had on his life. It is a story of friendship, love, and despair. A story of longing and what could have been.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up to 5. Writing style was irritating at first but then I came to appreciate it. Touching story.