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AFTERLIVES by Abdulrazak Gurnah Kirkus Star

AFTERLIVES

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Pub Date: Aug. 23rd, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-59354-1-883
Publisher: Riverhead

Pensive novel of desperate lives in colonial East Africa by 2021 Nobel Prize–winning writer Gurnah.

Where is Ilyas Hassan? That’s the central question that runs through Tanzanian British author Gurnah’s new novel, one that occupies its four principal characters. The oldest is Khalifa, who “did not look Indian, or not the kind of Indian they were used to seeing in that part of the world,” the product of an African mother and Gujarati father. Khalifa is but one of many Gujarati settlers around Zanzibar, territory taken by Germany in the “Scramble for Africa.” The Germans are not kind: By their lights, they “had to make the Africans feel the clenched fist of German power in order that they should learn to bear the yoke of their servitude compliantly.” Ilyas, a young migrant, is pressed into service in the schutztruppe, the colonial army, sent off to fight against first native peoples and then, as World War I erupts, the British. A younger man named Hamza also enlists, “silently wretched about what he had done.” Brutalized by a German officer in his unit, Hamza deserts and returns home and finds work in the same commercial enterprise as Ilyas and Khalifa, who has married a woman who is convinced that she is “surrounded by blasphemers,” a pious holy terror who reveals hidden depths. Gurnah’s story is an understated study in personality; the action is sparing, the reaction nuanced and wholly believable, and the love story that develops between Hamza and a young woman named Afiya touching: “ ‘I have nothing,’ he said. ‘Nor do I,’ she said. ‘We’ll have nothing together.’ ” The denouement, too, is unexpected, the story drawn to a close by two Ilyases: the original and Hamza’s son, who bears his name. Gurnah’s novel pairs well with Cameroon writer Patrice Nganang’s novel A Trail of Crab Tracks as a document of the colonial experience, and it is impeccably written.

A novel with an epic feel, even at 320 pages, building a complex, character-based story that stretches over generations.