Bitter Eden
by Tatamkhulu Afrika
Picador. 232 pages, $25.
HIGHLY ACCLAIMED when it was published in the UK in 2002, Bitter Eden is a novel by a South African writer named Tatamkhulu Afrika (his chosen name means “Grandfather Africa”). The author died shortly after the book, which was written years before, was finally published. Only now is the book making its way to American readers with a new U.S. edition. Based on the author’s own experience as a prisoner of war in Northern Africa during World War II, Bitter Eden tells the story of three men negotiating their emerging sexuality in an inhospitable time and under the bleakest of circumstances.
Tom, a young man from South Africa, meets Douglas, a fellow POW from England, and agrees to become his “mate,” a word fraught with a great deal of emotion as well as consequence. Tom, who narrates the story, is initially reluctant to have anything to do with the flamboyant Douglas, especially in a space as confined as a POW camp, given the realities of day-to-day survival. Writes the narrator: “What does put me off are his movements: the little almost dancing steps he takes even when, supposedly, he is standing still, the delicate, frenetic gestures of his hands, the almost womanliness of him that threatens to touch—and touch—and touch—and I have already told of my feelings concerning that.” Right from the start, then, the narrator writes of his desire to “abort a relationship upon which [Douglas] seems ferociously intent.” That the two men do wind up becoming friends has as much to do with Tom’s reluctant attraction to Douglas and his ambivalence about his own sexuality as it does with Douglas’ persistence.
Some readers may be put off by the harshness of the language, as well as the brutality of the conditions the novel depicts. But these were brutal times and an era in which expressions of tenderness or affection between men were strictly limited. As novelist André Aciman points out, “the word love is never mentioned” in the novel. However, it is all the more powerful for never being uttered, and makes every gesture of tenderness and affection stand out like a dandelion in a coal field.
Complicating Tom’s developing relationship with Douglas is the entrance of another prisoner of war, another Brit named Danny. Unlike Douglas, Danny is fully the masculine ideal: “His hair is black, springy, tightly curled, capping his head like a Renaissance cherub’s or an old Greek bust of a beautiful boy…Lower down is the body of a man who works at it—the breasts at the apex before masculinity becomes womanishness, the nipples pert and clear, the hair in the armpits tufting and lush, as lush a body-hair flowing with the flat belly down into the generous crotch, the tautly powerful thighs.” Bedding down beside Tom one cold winter night, Danny’s appearance instantly causes a disruption in the uneasy relationship between Tom and Douglas:
“Is this worrying you?”
I play it dumb. “Is what worrying me?”
“Me lying here with nothing on.”
Danny quickly adds: “Don’t get any wrong ideas. I’m married though no kid yet … and nobody gets to touch me down there. … Only my wife.”
After wrestling with whether to befriend Douglas, the narrator is forced to take stock of what he’s feeling night after night as he and Danny bed down beside him naked and they hold each other for warmth. Not surprisingly, Douglas becomes jealous of Tom and Danny’s new intimacy. The jealousy he soon displays, as well as his (incorrect) assumption about their sexual intimacy, provides an effective foil to Tom, as well as a goad for him to decide what it is, in fact, he feels toward Danny. The narrator writes: “A misshapen moon is now low in the sky. I do not know if it is rising or setting, suddenly do not even know where we are, never having been further than where we lost the war.” Now that Tom has begun to have feelings for another man, he’s totally uncertain how to process these feelings—or how to express them to Danny. Further complicating all the relationships is the implication that both Tom and Danny may have been abused by their fathers when they were young. This presents yet another hurdle for them to confront as they wrestle with their feelings for one another.
If Bitter Eden were merely the story of a reluctant gay man finally acknowledging his sexuality, that might make for a fine, if otherwise unremarkable, novel. What makes the novel so extraordinary is the simplicity with which its meaning unfolds. Issues of gender identity, sexuality, and societal repression all arise organically from the flow of events. Only after Tom is asked to play the role of a woman in the camp play (Lady Macbeth, no less!) does he allow himself to truly acknowledge what he feels toward Danny. As he does so, the issue of masculine versus feminine roles becomes even more clouded for both. Thus, ironically, it is only within the context of a POW camp (the “Bitter Eden” of the title), and by virtue of playing a woman’s role in a play, that Tom is able to acknowledge his feelings for another man. Tragically and ironically, the society outside the camp will not be nearly as tolerant, nor allow them or their relationship a place in which to flower.
For the details of life as a POW in World War II alone, Bitter Eden is an important novel. But it is much more than that. Its depiction of the growing love between Tom and Danny is the frankest, most surprising treatment of love between two men during wartime that I have ever encountered. It is a novel of thrilling artistry, astonishing harshness, and great beauty.
Dale W. Boyer is a writer based in Chicago.
