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termined effort to rebuild ers that uncle Ilyas was people who have done fifty years during which
his life. He finds work at sent to the Sachsenhausen good for the natives. This natives are press ganged to
Nassor Biashara’s ware- Concentration camp for fascination for Germans fight for their tormentors.
house and gets modest ac- breaking Nazi race laws, is what pushes him to However, things don’t
commodation in Khalifa’s and was eventually shot, volunteer for their army. completely fall apart
house, where he falls in trying to escape. As the title suggests in Afterlives. Hamza
love with Afiya. Hamza In a Dickensian Afterlives examines the returns to his war-
and Afiya marry and settle manner, Gurnah takes story of ordinary people, ravaged hometown to
down, promising to com- the reader through vivid torn apart in the aftermath piece together the broken
fort each other. descriptions of characters of colonisation. Unlike the fragments of his life. He
The last section dwells and events. The reader loud and powerful tone of realises that there is no
on Afiya and Hamza’s son, literally travels to every Nigerian novelist Chinua greater shame than one’s
Ilyas, named in remem- nook and corner of Achebe, Gurnah’s narra- body and spirit being
brance of Afiya’s brother, the village/town, feels tion is gentle, calm and owned by another human
who never returned from Hamza’s pain and sees mellow, but deeply dis- being. Gurnah unfolds the
the war. The trauma of fear and terror in the eyes turbing, as it tells of Africa romance between Hamza
war continues to haunt of the subjugated. The ravaged by colonisers and and Afiya as tenderly as a
Hamza as he has night- lowest ebb is the natives’ demoralised by racism. As lyrical poem. Desolation
mares. He wonders wheth- fall from innocence, one of Ilyas’ friends says, and emptiness give way
er it is his own trauma as some of them are “…the Germans have killed to dreams of a meaningful
or Afiya’s memories of carried away by coloniser so many people that the life together. However
her lost brother that are propaganda. On multiple country is littered with tumultuous the passage
haunting him. As the novel occasions, in the first skulls and bones and the might have been for its
ends, Ilyas is 38 years old section of the novel, llyas earth is soggy with blood”. characters, the book is a
employed as a broadcaster is seen supporting the The novel chronicles the beacon of hope for readers.
in the Federal Republic of Germans, stating that struggles of Africans over SHARMILA NARAYANA
Germany. There he discov- they are gifted and clever a time period of more than
The Book Review

APRIL 2022 EDUCATIONWORLD 99