Novelist Maaza Mengiste on how the Nobel laureate has explored exile in all its forms throughout his career
For more than three decades, Abdulrazak Gurnah has been writing with a quiet and unwavering conviction about those relegated to the forgotten corners of history. Born in Zanzibar in 1948, Gurnah fled political oppression and settled in England at the age of 18. The author of numerous short stories and essays, as well as 10 novels, he has dedicated his writing career to examining the many ways that human beings can find themselves in exile: from their homes, families and communities and, perhaps most importantly, from themselves. His novels unfold in the intimate spaces created by families, companions and friendships: those spaces that are nurtured by love and duty yet rendered vulnerable by their very nature. In book after book, he guides us through seismic historic moments and devastating societal ruptures while gently outlining what it is that keeps those families, friendships and loving spaces intact, if not fully whole.
Many of his books, including his first novel, Memory of Departure (1987), grapple with betrayals and broken promises on the part of the state or those in power, and focus on people who leave home in search of better lives. His second novel, Paradise, which was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker prize, is set just before the first world war and is a heartfelt – and heartbreaking – exploration of the costs of German colonialism and political aggression. In hindsight, it feels like a precursor to his latest novel, Afterlives (2020), which opens in the midst of a 1907 uprising against German colonisers and unfolds to offer us psychologically complex characters who, over generations and through transitions from German to British rule, struggle to maintain their families and communities in a small coastal town in mainland Tanzania.