Abdulrazak Gurnah, School of English Emeritus Professor, has just published a new novel, entitled Afterlives (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Afterlives tells the story of three characters whose lives interlink. Restless, ambitious Ilyas was stolen from his parents by the Schutzruppe askari, the German colonial troops; after years away, he returns to his village to find his parents gone, and his sister Afiya given away.

Hamza was not stolen, but was sold; he has come of age in the army, at the right hand of an officer whose control has ensured his protection but marked him for life. Hamza does not have words for how the war ended for him. Returning to the town of his childhood, all he wants is work, however humble, and security – and the beautiful Afiya.

The century is young. The Germans and the British and the French and the Belgians and whoever else have drawn their maps and signed their treaties and divided up Africa. As they seek complete dominion they are forced to extinguish revolt after revolt by the colonised. The conflict in Europe opens another arena in east Africa where a brutal war devastates the landscape.

As these interlinked friends and survivors come and go, live and work and fall in love, the shadow of a new war lengthens and darkens, ready to snatch them up and carry them away.

Further details about the book can be found on the publisher’s website. 

Abdulrazak Gurnah’s new novel ‘Afterlives’ reviewed in Evening Standard

Abdulrazak Gurnah, School of English Emeritus Professor, has had his new novel Afterlives (Bloomsbury, 2020) reviewed in the Evening Standard.

Afterlives tells the story of three characters: restless, ambitious Ilyas was stolen from his parents by German colonial troops; after years away, he returns to his village to find his parents gone, and his sister Afiya given away. Hamza was not stolen, but was sold; he has come of age in the schutztruppe, at the right hand of an officer whose control has ensured his protection but marked him for life. As these interlinked friends and survivors come and go, live and work and fall in love, the shadow of a new war lengthens and darkens, ready to snatch them up and carry them away.

In the Evening Standard review, Jane Shilling writes: ‘in concert halls, museums, public institutions and city streets, a passionate debate is taking place about colonialism and the value of individual lives. It is a question that Abdulrazak Gurnah has repeatedly addressed in his long career as a novelist’.

‘A tender account of the extraordinariness of ordinary lives, Afterlives combines entrancing storytelling with writing whose exquisite emotional precision confirms Gurnah’s place among the outstanding stylists of modern English prose’.

The full review can be read on the Evening Standard’s website. 

And further details about the book can be found on the publisher’s website.