Abdulrazak Gurnah’s work was relatively unknown to French-speaking readers when the British writer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature last fall. Only three of his ten novels had been translated into French more than a decade ago and remained untraceable by the time he won the prestigious accolade.
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We can now discover two of these titles just reissued in the language of Molière, readings necessary to understand the current migratory crises and which have not aged a bit despite the passage of time: Paradiseoriginally published in 1994, and Near the seapublished in 2001.
Through his characters, it is the story of his native country that Abdulrazak Gurnah tells. That of this region of East Africa which became Tanzania in the 1960s, as well as that of a people who scattered beyond its borders following the chaos born in the ruins of the colonization.
Paradise dates back to the turn of the XXand century. This land, where accents of Arabic, Kiswahili and English mingle at the same time, is not yet in the hands of the British.
It was in this mix of cultures that Yusuf grew up. He was 12 years old when he was taken away from home by a wealthy merchant to whom his parents owed money. The teenager will work in the shop of this man in the company of an older boy who suffered the same fate. More or less abandoned to themselves, without being mistreated, they share a daily life in ignorance of what will become of them.
The day arrives when Yusuf must accompany his master on one of his journeys inland. His eyes then open on a territory coveted by the Arabs, the Indians, the Germans and the British, who are determined, each in their own way, to exercise their domination even before the rumors of colonial wars between Europeans become reality. .
Over the course of his meetings, Yusuf discovers his country and wonders about his condition as a slave, about this notion of freedom that he does not even try to regain as his submission is acquired, so that he becomes in a way the symbol of the destiny of his homeland.
From colonization to exile
Near the sea can be read in a second time as the logical continuation of Paradise. The novel written years later echoes the writer’s own life through the character of Latif Mahmud. Like Abdulrazak Gurnah, he left his country at the age of 18, in the 1960s, to apply for refugee status in the United Kingdom, where he settled and became a professor of English literature.
It is there that 30 years later, without ever having set foot in his native country, Latif Mahmud ends up being caught up in the past when a man who knew his father arrives in England.
Near the sea is a window on the British occupation then on the turbulent years which surrounded the independence of Tanzania and which led to the flight of many nationals. In addition to shining the spotlight on the scars left by colonialism, Abdulrazak Gurnah explores the identity conflicts that plague exiles around the world.
“I overcame the terror that grips me every time I have to meet someone from the country. Was he going to point this out to me, or would he think in his heart that I had become so English, so different, so foreign? As if I could only be here or there, one or the other, as if remoteness was such a simple thing, as if I had lost my identity and now was only ‘a traitor, a semblance of myself, a fabricated puppet,’ he has his Latif character say.
The writer also took advantage of receiving his prize to speak out on the issue of refugees, calling on Europe to change its view of migrants arriving from Africa. “They don’t come empty-handed,” he said.
These themes that are dear to him return in various forms in all his novels and we can only hope to soon be able to read the translations of his most recent titles, including the latest, Afterlives, published in English in 2020, recounts the period of German colonization in East Africa. Because, as he writes in Near the sea“knowing what happened in order to understand where we are, how we have become what we are, and what we reveal about ourselves, is important”.
Paradise
Abdulrazak Gurnah (translated from English by Anne-Cécile Padoux)
Of Christmas
288 pages
Near the sea
Abdulrazak Gurnah (translated from English by Sylvette Gleize)
Of Christmas
384 pages