Danish author Peter H. Fogtdal independently published The Mango Dancer in 2022. A 12-year labor of love, The Mango Dancer welcomes the reader into an intoxicating lotus garden of saffron marigolds and savage rains, gleaming gold watches, and wide-eyed searches for God.
An accomplished and widely praised writer, Fogtdal has received recognition in magazines such as The Believer, LA Review, and Rain Taxi, and has been referred to as a “literary Danish master” by Irish laureate Sebastian Barry. Fogtdal has 15 works to his name, four of which have been bestsellers, including The Tsar’s Dwarf. The majority are novels in his native tongue; three have been translated into French, two into Portuguese, and one into English and Ukrainian.
The Mango Dancer may be a work of fiction (less common for me to review), but then so was Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, and The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield, even The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. In fact, the list of great works of fiction is almost endless. We cannot underplay the power of well-written fiction as a substrate for wisdom. Nor can we underestimate the gift of humor.
The Mango Dancer is an adagio-jive with a dose of tango, set within the world of an Indian ashram where we, the reader, can feel the jungle sweat along with the protagonist.
Hummingbirds and the copy-cat sunbird are the titular mango dancers; “the Geminis of the Sky—curious, restless, and impatient . . . quick to move on to the next flower when they get bored . . . with the same craving for nectar and everything colorful, sweet, and divine.” This is surely a metaphor for our own flighty human nature. The book itself dances a fine line between comedy and cynicism, earnest yearnings and Freudian frailties, our human urges both earthly and spiritual. Yet The Mango Dancer is neither a harsh jab at another guru abusing power, nor is it doe-eyed, zealous idolatry.
It appeals to my sense of humor to the degree that I chuckled aloud on more than one occasion. But, as if drunk on blue lotus within the swirling mists of rainbow ambiguity of what may be real or imagined, Fogtdal drops in shining diamonds, healthy smatterings of self-reflective text, and pearls of wisdom.
The author’s tone reminds me of the American writer Tom Robbins, or even Monty Python’s Life of Brian—a film once banned in cinemas by people who had never even seen it, assuming blasphemy (what many didn’t realize, especially at the time, was that this irreverent look at the life of Jesus Christ never, at any point, downplayed or diminished the role of the man himself. It was a satirical lens on the behavior of those around him.)
Fogtdal walks a similarly fine line between irreverent commentary and the existential longing to relinquish ourselves into something vaster than our own lives: characters whose honest dishonesty renders them more honest than the dishonest who profess honesty; and the inevitable controversies of guru worship and any collection of people who can become bound up by zealotry or corruption. The reality is that we are all still human. The problems of corruption and the abuse of power within religion are both chronic and complicated.
I have strong opinions about the innate misogyny, sexual misconduct, and ego-driven proclivities within spiritual communities that profess enlightened hierarchy—opinions I’ve shared publicly on more than one occasion. What Fogtdal’s work of fiction does, however, is shine a light on the complex nuances of some gurus and ashrams, but with a wry wit and IMAX-like descriptions. It’s too easy—and lazy—to imply that lost souls and over-eager Westerners who pack up their modern lives for the magic pill of the East, are grist for the ashram mill because, of course, most wisdom seekers don’t assume themselves to be ripe for manipulation or exploitation. In fact, many followers of controversial spiritual leaders feel a profound loyalty to them and derive life-changing benefits from their experiences. By the same token, most gurus are sincere—even those who eventually fall afoul of their own egos.
I was delighted to connect with Fogtdal and have a conversation for this review to discuss why he felt called to write this book—especially in the way that he has.
“It’s the closest novel to the real experiences that I’ve had,” Fogtdal explains. “I’ve been to India, followed a guru—[Indian guru and philanthropist] Sathya Sai Baba, who was huge across the world. What is true in the book is that I, too, was a believer in the beginning. I don’t regret that at all. But I did not want to write one of those typical ‘they are all swindlers’ books. I wanted to write an ambiguous novel about following gurus. Sathya Sai Baba, like a lot of gurus, starts off from a good place. I believe that he was totally genuine in the beginning, a man of miracles. Then, what happens to a lot of gurus, especially when they start making too much money and their ego becomes too big, is that their abilities simply don’t work anymore and they start to cheat. There’s even evidence of this on YouTube. And in the case of Sai Baba, he also became fond of young boys.
“But I didn’t want to write a novel that says they are all bad, and that their followers are all idiots, because that would mean that I was an idiot. And I’m not an idiot. I got a lot out of my experiences. I wanted to write this book because things are not black and white. But the only thing I have in common with Nick [the novel’s protagonist] is that we are both Danish. I’m not him [although the novel is written in first person], and he’s not me.
“The ashram [in reality as well as in the book] feels like a piece of heaven at first. But when people believe the same, they can start to think that they are more evolved than others—in the same way that other religions can—and that their guru is the only guru. This is what happens in closed circuits. This is when they start to degenerate, of course. But we all want the truth, or we believe we have the truth, and our ego wants to believe that the others just don’t know what they are doing.
“I wanted [the reader] to doubt all the experiences [in the book], as the ashram has this dreamlike quality. I did not want to give clear answers [although there are plenty of questions and open thoughts for the reader to ponder]. Yet, as the writer, I had no clear answers or preconceived idea of how to end the book either. I find that the most magical part of writing a book is the end—and this one took me by huge surprise. And I think it’s perfect.”
And I agree.
In conversation, I volunteered that the book’s ending may be a metaphor for our own personal islands, and the view that with enough devotion we will not be swallowed by the tempest already engulfing others. At least, that’s the hope—and that just maybe our personal guru has been with us all along.
Related features from BDG
Book Review: How Not to Miss the Point by Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche
Book Review: Eihei Dogen Zenji’s The Roots of Goodness
Book Review: Happy Relationships by Kimberly Brown
