March 1, 2022
In Gurnah's first book since winning the Nobel Prize, Ilyas is taken from his East African home by German colonial troops in the late 1800s and compelled to fight against his own people. Years later, he returns to find his parents dead and his sister, Afiya, effectively enslaved to their self-professed aunt and uncle. Hamza, too, returns home after having been sold into service and left badly scarred, not just emotionally but physically, and he falls in love with beautiful, unbreakably determined Afiya. As these three young people try to get on with their lives, war is coming after them again, with decades of rebellion and suppression to follow.
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Starred review from June 6, 2022
In Nobel laureate Gurnah’s riveting latest (after Gravel Heart), the lives of three East Africans play out in an unnamed coastal town during the period of German colonial rule in Africa in the early 20th century. As a child, Ilyas is kidnapped by a soldier from the German colonial army. Years later, he locates and briefly reunites with his sister, Afiya, only to enlist with the schutztruppe, a band of African mercenaries, and subject her once more to the cruel treatment of the family who raised her after their parents were killed. Elsewhere, Hamza, a fellow townsman with an enigmatic past, joins the Germans as a mercenary and is subsequently immersed in a bloody territorial war among the European colonial powers. Years later, he meets and falls for Afiya, and their attempts to locate Ilyas, who went missing during the war, close out the novel. Gurnah’s spare, unvarnished prose shines a harsh but honest light on the brutality of Africa’s colonial past and the violence inflicted by Europeans, which amounts to “absurd and nonchalant heroics,” and through his rich main characters, the impact of colonialism and other key global events truly hits home. This profound account of empire and the everyman is not to be missed. Agent: Peter Straus, RCW.
Starred review from June 15, 2022
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.
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Starred review from June 1, 2022
The latest novel from Nobel laureate Gurnah resists categorization. As a breathtaking historical account, this underscores decades-long horrors of war, displacement, slavery, and colonial conquest. Yet Gurnah also intimately captures luminous facets of humanity through unique characters, each with a rich personal background and attention-grabbing, often humorous, sometimes disturbing idiosyncrasies. Ultimately, in this story of a love that transcends pain, suffering, tragedy, and misfortune, Gurnah constructs a remarkable portrait of tenderness, deep affection, and longing that stretches over time and across continents. Set in colonial East Africa in the early twentieth century, the book centers on Hamza, who volunteers as an askari (local soldier) fighting for German colonial troops. After recovering from a debilitating injury, Hamza flees to his old home. He secures work and meets Afiya, who was rescued by her brother, Ilyas, from a terrifyingly abusive childhood and a life of oppressive and violent servitude. As Hamza and Afiya begin their courtship and find love, Ilyas, who also volunteered as an askari, has disappeared, perhaps as a casualty of war. While Ilyas' whereabouts remain unknown, Afiya discovers, through Hamza's old war contacts, priceless information regarding her long-lost but never-forgotten brother. Absorbing, powerful, and enduring, Afterlives is an extraordinary reading experience by one of the great writers of our time.
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August 1, 2022
In this U.S. release of Nobel winner Gurnah's (Paradise; By the Sea) 2021 novel, a century of East Africa's history comes viscerally to life through deeply flawed, wryly funny, sometimes admirable characters. Readers will meet Khalifa, an Indian/African accountant in a childless marriage with Asha; plus 10-year-old orphan Afiya, rescued from an abusive home by her brother Ilyas, a runaway snatched off the streets by German soldiers and sent to a work farm where he learned to read, write, and replace Islam with Christianity. Then there is young Hamza, too delicate for war but conscripted as an officer's assistant until he displeased a superior and was viciously maimed. Their lives intertwine over generations as they work to survive and thrive on their land while German, British, and Portuguese occupiers plunder the region's gold, coffee, rubber, and other abundant resources. Focusing on the daily lives of these people, Gurnah touches on important themes, including the push/pull of various cultures, the value of education for women, and the ramifications of protracted wars, though he fails to delve deeply into any. VERDICT Will appeal to aficionados of historical fiction but could leave others yearning for a deeper understanding of the characters' motivations for their sometimes inexplicable actions. Still, the Nobel Prize bestowed renewed international acclaim on Gurnah's body of work, making this novel a must-have.--Sally Bissell
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