Afterlives

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah, read by Damian Lynch.

BY THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 2021

'One of Africa's greatest living writers' Giles Foden
'Exquisite' Telegraph
‘A remarkable novel, by a wondrous writer’ Philippe Sands
'To read Afterlives is to be returned to the joy of storytelling' Aminatta Forna
'Effortlessly compelling storytelling ... You forget that you are reading fiction, it feels so real' Leila Aboulela


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.

Critics Review

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. Like its predecessors, this is a novel that demands to be read and reread, for its humour, generosity of spirit and clear-sighted vision of the infinite contradictions of human nature
Evening Standard
From the first assured pages of Afterlives, a book of quiet beauty and tragedy, it is clear one is in the hands of a master storyteller
Financial Times
A deeply compelling novel that opens in the early years of the 20th century, during Germany’s brutal colonial rule in East Africa. Oscillating between the personal and political, Gurnah opens the imagination, the connections between that moment, what followed in Europe, and our own struggles to grapple with the legacies of colony and race. The final pages are as devastating as any I have read. A brilliant and important book for our times, by a wondrous writer
New Statesman, Books of the Year
Riveting and heartbreaking ... A compelling novel, one that gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure.
Guardian
In clean, measured prose, Gurnah zooms in on individual acts of violence ... and unexpected acts of kindness. Affecting in its ordinariness, Afterlives is a compelling exploration of the urge to find places of sanctuary
Daily Telegraph
A remarkable novel, by a wondrous writer, deeply compelling, a thread that links our humanity with the colonial legacy that lies beneath, in ways that cut deep
Philippe Sands
To read Afterlives is to be returned to the joy of storytelling as Abdulrazak Gurnah takes us to the place where imagined lives collide with history. In prose as clear and as rhythmic as the waters of the Indian Ocean, the story of Hamza and Afiya is one of simple lives buffeted by colonial ambitions, of the courage it takes to endure, to hold oneself with dignity, and to live with hope in the heart
Aminatta Forna
Effortlessly compelling storytelling ... Gurnah excels at depicting the lives of those made small by cruelty and injustice ... A beautiful, cruel world of bittersweet encounters and pockets of compassion, twists of fate and fluctuating fortunes ... You forget that you are reading fiction, it feels so real
Leila Aboulela
As beautifully written and pleasurable as anything I've read ... The work of a maestro
Guardian
An aural archive of a lost Africa ... alive with the unexpected. In it, an obliterated world is enthrallingly retrieved
Sunday Times
Rarely in a lifetime can you open a book and find that reading it encapsulates the enchanting qualities of a love affair ... one scarcely dares breathe while reading it for fear of breaking the enchantment
The Times
Many layered, violent, beautiful and strange ... a poetic and vividly conjured book about Africa and the brooding power of the unknown
Independent on Sunday
A powerfully evocative oeuvre that keeps coming back to the same questions, in spare, graceful prose, about the ties that bind and the ties that fray
Daily Telegraph
A vibrant and vivid novel which shows human beings in all their generosity and greed, pettiness and nobility, so that even minor characters seem capable of carrying entire novels all by themselves
Herald
Abdulrazak Gurnah is a master of his craft ... An intricate, delicate novel, vitally necessary
New Internationalist
Brings together the themes of choice, love dislocation, memory and history. The powerful stories that Gurnah tells in his novels provoke us to examine our own choices and where they have led us today
London Magazine

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