Afterlives

I didn’t find it an easy book to read, but it’s a powerful telling of a brutal time in Tanzanian history—the beginning of the 20th Century, and a tender love story.

As unflinching as Gurnah is about what war and violence do to the human body and mind, I really admired how he focused on the impact on the lives of ordinary people caught up in war and how the opposing realities of violence and love can coexist simultaneously.

Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2021. I’m ashamed to say that I’d not heard of him before then. So, in 2022, I began to read some of his books. I recommend this book because I like books with a good storyline and engaging characters, but, reaching the end, I feel I have learned something new.

I’ve studied history and written historical novels, but I knew little about German colonialism in Africa. Being in a mixed relationship myself, I know that prejudice is not the sole property of white… show more.

This book exemplifies why I read. I love it when an author’s writing itself is a graceful treat, in this case, absorbed like sips from a cup of cocoa on an unhurried day.

I still require myself to read three to four literary works per year. Afterlives is why I do it, a nugget of a novel that teaches as it entertains. When you spin a quietly gripping story while simultaneously educating me, you’ve got me.

It is an examination of how the human spirit survived the cruelty of German colonialism in East Africa through three Muslim characters, each generous… show more.