Gurnah’s haunting novels of war and oppression, which won him the Nobel Prize in literature last year, defy the dominant trends in American publishing.
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Retelling colonial history of Tanzania through local lives
Friday April 09 2021 Afterlives has tender moments, acts of kindness, petty incidents and plenty of gossip that characterise small town living. PHOTO | COURTESY
Summary Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah, delves into Tanzania’s colonial past not widely known spanning late 17th century and into the post-World War I years.
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Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah.
At the 1885 Berlin Conference European powers had divided up Africa amongst themselves, heralding the ‘Scramble for Africa’. Tanzania, at the time Tanganyika, became a German protectorate. The book begins in 1907 when 26-year-old Khalifa, of mixed African and Indian heritage, is a clerk to Indian merchant Amur Biashara in an unnamed coastal town.