Desertion opens with an Englishman, Martin Pearce, stumbling into an east African town, exhausted and potentially injured. He is taken in by Hassanali, who found him in the streets. During his recovery, Pearce falls in love with Hassanali's sister Rehana. The stage is set for a tale of interracial love in colonial Africa, c. 1899. And then suddenly, as Part I comes to an end, it becomes clear there is more to this story than the European man and native woman. As the narrator says, It is about how one story contains many and how they belong not to us but are part of the random currents of our time, and about how stories capture us and entangle us for all time. (p. 120). I read that passage and was hooked; entangled for all time, so to speak.

Gurnah fast-forwards from the story of Martin and Rehana to 1960s Zanzibar on the brink of independence. The narrator is Rashid, the youngest in a family that includes sister Farida and brother Amin. Farida doesn't do well in school, and takes up dressmaking while secretly writing poetry. Amin finishes school, but certain events keep him rooted in Zanzibar. He cares for his parents and shepherds the family through tumultuous years of government unrest. Rashid appears to be an underachiever, and yet is the only one to qualify for university education in England. He leaves Zanzibar just before independence, and struggles with finding his way in a strange land. He is not entirely happy with what he becomes:
In time I drifted into a tolerable alienness. Living day to day, this alienness became a kind of emblem, indeterminate about its origins. Soon I began to say black people and white people, like everyone else, uttering the lie with increasing ease, conceding the sameness of our difference, deferring to a deadening vision of a racialised world. For by agreeing to black and white, we also agree to lmit the complexity of possibility, we agree to mendacities that for centuries served and will continue to serve crude hungers for power and pathological self-affirmations. (p. 222)

The story eventually comes full circle. One story did, indeed, contain many. The connections unfolded in a tantalizing, gradual way and the overall effect was quite poignant. A very enjoyable read. (

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lindsacl | Jun 18, 2009 |

Desertion is a gripping novel that tackled themes of colonialism, particularly the impact on a country when the colonial power pulls out, and issues of race in relationships. The novel is framed by two forbidden love affairs which underline the impact of prejudice, of different kinds, on the lovers. There are subtle references to Zanzibar's history and the impact of certain events on the characters. A very compelling novel with lyrical prose and memorable characters. (

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Litfan | Jan 26, 2008 |

A very well-written novel about an Englishman who has an affair with a native woman in East Africa and then, in more modern times, a family where 1 of the sons has an affair with the original couple's granddaughter. The desertion is many-fold -- the Englishman deserts his lover & their daughter; the young man deserts his lover (the granddaughter), the brother deserts his country....

franoscar | Jan 5, 2008 |

This is my second Gurnah novel after "By the Sea" and while this novel is not equal to that great novel, it is another well-written story thus confirming in my mind Gurnah a gifted and thoughtful writer. The novel is made up of two seeming separate stories, one set in 1899, the other in the 1950s, the two are separated by a brief 'interruption." The title "Desertion" may allude to many things in the book, but I think it refers first to the author's own abandonment of his first storyline just at the point where you, the reader, are most invested in it. This has an interesting effect. There is a sense of loss, even some anger, a bit of WTF? Some readers may never forgive the author for this strange story arrangement, but as the character speaking in the 'Interruption' that follows says, "Now that I have arrived at the critical moment, I find myself suddenly hard up against what I cannot fully imagine." It is difficult to say much here without spoilers. Suffice it to say, that the novel eventually circles back on itself, not in a post-modern way, but rather like a spiral which circles back while moving away from. That sense of loss one feels when the first story is abandoned reverberates throughtout the novel.
As the 'I' in the story says, "it is about how one story contains many and how they belong not to us but are part of the random currents of our time, and about how stories capture us and entangle us for all time." (

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avaland | Nov 5, 2007 |

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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0375423540, Hardcover)

Writing at the peak of his powers, Abdulrazak Gurnah gives us in Desertion a spellbinding novel of forbidden love and cultural upheaval, with consequences powerfully reverberating through three generations and across continents—from the heyday of the British empire to the aftermath of African independence.

Early one morning in 1899, in a small, dilapidated town along the coast of Mombassa, a Muslim man, Hassanali, sets out for a mosque but doesn’t get there. Out of the desert stumbles an Englishman who collapses at Hassanali’s feet: Martin Pearce—writer, traveler, something of an Orientalist. Hassanali cares for Pearce until
the Englishman is taken to the home of colonial officer Frederick Turner to recuperate. When Pearce returns to thank his Good Samaritan, he meets and is enraptured by Rehana, Hassanali’s sister—by her gorgeous eyes and tragic aura. And so begins the passionate, illicit love affair—two lives and cultures colliding—that informs the rich, finely woven tapestry of Desertion.

Gurnah, who has been short-listed for the Booker Prize, deftly and dramatically evokes the personal and political scandals of empire, the weight of tradition—of religion and culture—in everyday lives, the role of women in Muslim society, the vicissitudes of love, the complexities of filial relationships, the inexorability of miscegenation, and the power of fiction to charm and to harm. Desertion is a highly achieved, riveting work of imagination, brimming with controlled figural inventiveness, psychological acuity, and moral complexity.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400)

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