Achmat dangor biography of abraham lincoln

Ronit Frenkel receives funding from the National Research Foundation. In his 71 years, Achmat Dangor was many things to many people, both in South Africa and across the world. He was a lifelong activist and social justice advocate. He was once banned for his political activities in resistance to apartheid. He was a cultural leader at the centre of the Congress of South African Writers , a tireless development organiser and, for six years, the chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

For me, he was above all an extraordinary novelist and poet who expanded how I think. It was and I was starting to write my dissertation proposal. It remains a formative novel in my understanding of South African culture, and a favourite novel due to the sheer pleasure to be found in its writing, in its gorgeous prose and magical, mythical landscape.

South African Indian writers reflect different vantage points of national and transnational experiences: Achmat Dangor, shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

The protagonist Oscar Kahn is revealed to be Omar Khan, both coloured and Muslim, who has passed as Jewish and white by changing two letters of his name. His was a focus on the relationship between race, memory and apartheid constructions. Both the form and the content of his novels highlight the ambiguous character of identity and history.

They certainly changed my own understandings of my world. In an interview with Bold Type magazine, he himself described it as follows:. Ask the Caliph who caused his daughter Leila and her lover Majnoen so much suffering: his caliphate probably did not endure as long as their legend. The legend of Majnoen in South Africa becomes a story of enduring love that defies despotic rule.