Abdulrazak Gurnah

This touching story of an immigrant from Zanzibar to London is told in his own melancholy voice. When Salim's father left home with no explanation, his world imploded. His mother provided no explanation but continued to make his Baba's lunch every day, with Salim as the delivery boy. Eventually Baba returned to Kuala Lampur and Salim's uncle Amir funded his relocation to London and his school fees, until Samir decides to major in literature and drop his business courses and Amir cuts him show more off. Salim puts off visiting his home and his mother for years, until he has improved his financial situation, and by the time he travels, his mother has died and he reunites with Baba. The last third of the book is Baba's story of why he left his home and family, Amir's role, and it's incredibly painful. The writing is tender, sensitive, and memorable. show less

I am troubled by this book. I need more time to digest it. But I’ll share my thoughts having just completed it. In a nutshell, I wanted to be more impressed than I was. And it would be unfair to Gurnah if I did not admit to being impressed nevertheless. Yusuf, the protagonist, is sold by his father at the age of 12. Leaving behind his family and rural village, he becomes an apprentice of sorts to Aziz, a wealthy, worldly merchant in precolonial urban East Africa. The story is at once no show more more than and much more than a coming-of-age story. It is Africa’s story as well, at least in part. All this said, I found the end baffling for a number of reasons. I am not giving anything away by saying that it seems to me a bit forced; that what happens doesn’t quite mesh with what preceded it. The large pieces of the novel are all fascinating and all well done; I don’t think that they are woven seamlessly. For example, the story of Aziz’s wife felt “tacked on.” While well done, it didn’t work as part of and successor to all that preceded it. A troubling novel but one which has convinced me to read more of Gurnah. show less

A man flees his home country to escape persecution. Another one fled years earlier. And then Fate puts them together - twice - once back home on Zanzibar, and now in England. That's the main premise of this short novel - but behind the almost mundane story of refugees and finding one's home, Gurnah manages to tell a story of Zanzibar and a story about the power of memories and perceptions.

Zanzibar is not a locality most people will be familiar with - I suspect the name will be familiar but show more other from that, it is usually just one of those places that you never think about. The part of this novel which take place there paint a picture which will stay with me for a long time (and which made me wonder again what were the Omanis doing there at all) and which may be better than almost any history text you can find about these times. But it is also a personal story - we see the island through the eyes of the two men - both of which fled the island, each for their own reason and yet, they both made the decision to do it. And if it is not enough to remind you about the power of telling a story, the dependence of a narrator when you are told a story, Gurnah reinforces us by having the two men remember the same times and places... and remember them differently. Even if you add them up, you still seem to miss pieces of the puzzle - and that's what this is all about - every story has a lot of sides and when we live through a time, we get one side only.

And that duality and difference is there in everything - in how the two men became refugees, in how they adapted to the changes, in how they keep their memories for home (and what they actually want to keep), even in who they meet when they went away from Zanzibar. It is like one of those carnival mirrors - it seems like it is the same story but in reality, it is 2 different stories - in a sea of separate stories. Being a refugee is not a story in itself; it is part of one's story, changing with the particulars of the individual. And yes, there are the mundane parts of the stories of both men - the stolen box, the German pen-friend, the room in the squalid house - the mundane is as much part of being human as is the exotic and interesting after all.

There had been a lot of books in the last years about refugees and memories of home and finding your place in a new country. This is one of the more memorable ones I've read - even if being a refugee is at the front of the story, it is just part of it, almost getting lost behind the story about what a person tells themselves about their own life.

That is the first novel by Gurnah which I read and I probably would not have picked it up if he had not won the Nobel prize - there are a lot of authors out there and he was not exactly popular (the day the Nobel was announced, my local library had a single copy of a single book by him (this one, the copy I read after waiting for it since the announcement - quite a lot of people beat me to requesting it that day...; the library had added quite a few more since then). I plan to explore what else he had written now - because regardless of how I got to read this novel, I really liked his way of writing. show less

The latest novel by last year's winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is set in the former colony of German East Africa, or Deutsch-Ostafrika, beginning in the immediate aftermath of the Maji Maji Rebellion (1905-07), in which an armed insurrection by local residents against harsh demands and working conditions imposed on them by the colonists was met with brutal and overwhelming force, and the resultant genocide by the Germans cost approximately 300,000 Africans their lives.

Khalifa is a show more half African, half Indian young man who is hired as a bookkeeper by a cunning and largely unscrupulous merchant in a port city in German East Africa. After he agrees to marry the niece of the merchant, a match which benefitted the merchant but did not bring happiness to Khalifa or his new wife, he meets and befriends a younger man, Ilyas, who enters town with a letter of recommendation by his German overseer. Ilyas was orphaned at a young age and rescued from bondage by his master, who taught him both the language and the customs of the mother country. Once he is settled Ilyas returns to his home village and rescues his beautiful younger sister, Afiya, from the family who has kept her as little more than a house servant. After the two settle in a peaceful existence in town Ilyas suddenly decides to enlist as a soldier in the schutztruppe, the colonial troops which were tasked to crush any rebellious activities or behaviors by the resentful and downtrodden subjects of the Germans. Afiya is left unprotected, but is rescued from a life of abuse and bondage by Khalifa and his wife Asha.

The schutztruppe in German East Africa is used to fight against the askari, Africans of other countries who were often forcibly recruited to engage in war against enemy colonies during the First World War, under inhuman conditions and with heavy loss of life. One survivor of the war is Hamza, who returns to the port city that he escaped from by joining the schutztruppe. He is hired by the son of the merchant who employed Khalifa, and he gradually gets to know, and ultimately fall in love with, Afiya, who remains unmarried and available.

The primary focus of Afterlives is the growing relationship between Afiya and Hamza, and their story is beautifully conveyed by the author, with rich portrayals of the young lovers and the other major characters in the novel. The brutality of colonial rule under the Germans between the end of the Maji Maji Rebellion and the end of World War I is also compelling and evocative, particularly Hamza’s often harsh treatment by his commanding officers. However, the end of the book is quite rushed, underdeveloped and somewhat unconvincing, as if Gurnah wanted to be done with the book. As a result I knocked down my rating of Afterlives by half a star to four stars, but it is still a superb novel and one well worth reading. show less