kagablog

A journey up the arse of God

Sugar Man and Other Bitter Stories
Aryan Kaganof
2002
Pine Slopes Publications

Aryan Kaganof’s second novel begins with quotations from Puerto Rican singer Jesus Rodriguez and Baudelaire and is informed by a quotation from Heraclitus: “Nothing worthwhile is gained without strife”. Existing within the same essentially South African Hell which informed his earlier novel Hectic!, Sugar Man is a work of many levels. Hectic went for the gut with the clarity of a Charles Bukowski. Sugar Man plumbs the depths of a Hell that is on Earth with the precision of Georges Bataille or Edgar Allen Poe. The eponymous Sugar Man, a drug-dealer and philosophical low-life is searching for the drug lord known as the Dark Magus. To truly know the Dark Magus he must become the Dark Magus. This is a journey that leads to death or possibly to realising that he is dead already. Street girls with drug habits pepper the narrative with names such as Nameless Nobody. There is also an array of blondes, perhaps all of them one blonde, perhaps not. Their melanin deficiency is a sign of a particular form of vampirism.

And then there are the meetings with film producers. Kaganof as a successful filmmaker knows this world well, especially the bullshitters, liars, pretenders, sniffers and snorters that do penance in these halls of Karma. Sugar Man takes time out for three such meetings within the narrative. Many of the characters described are mighty close to real celebs of South Africa’s belicose film industry. For those who haunt the places where people with projects congregate, these narrative asides are worthy of note.

No easy read, Kaganof takes his search into the dark side, even unto the very ends of the cosmos, up the very arse of God. J.K.Rowling beware. Sugar Man is a mature Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the Chamber Pot of Secrets. The final revelations exist in the scatological

South African literature has been waiting a long time for the incisive brilliance of Kaganof. Only two South African authors I can think of are his equal. Etienne le Roux and J.M.Coetzee. The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Trevor Steele Taylor
this review originally published by African Review Of Books