I am in the early stages of this project but my expectation is that it will become a novel. The planned outline of the narrative is as follows. A young man arrives in a town without money and without work. He has an injury in his leg about which he is silent. His demeanour is generally withdrawn. His name is Hamza. He had lived in the town before as a youth, but he had lived a restricted life, and recent events may have confused him. He finds a benefactor who offers him accommodation, where he befriends the servant girl. Through their courtship we discover Hamza’s story.This other narrative line concerns Hamza’s recruitment in the schutztruppen in the German East war and the relationship he has with a German officer. There is still more to read but the writing is under way, and I plan to press on with both while I am at Stias.
Related to Fugitive Whispers
Publication
Afterlives
Gurnah, Abdulrazak . 2020. Afterlives (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Publishing. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/afterlives-9781526615879/
Event
Public Lecture by Nobel laureate Prof Abdulrazak Gurnah
Register here to attend online or in-person.
Article
Reading the World – moving away from universalising to a recognition of difference: Public lecture by Abdulrazak Gurnah
A South-South dialogue would disperse the source of critical and aesthetic concerns from the Eurocentric influence which colonial education and global dominance has made inescapable.
Article
2021 Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Abdulrazak Gurnah
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021 is awarded to Tanzanian novelist and STIAS fellow Abdulrazak Gurnah for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.
Article
Reminding us to read, reread and hope - Public lecture by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Closely following the Nobel in Africa launch and inaugural Nobel Symposium at STIAS, Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, the first Tanzanian and fifth African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature returned to STIAS to present the annual Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) humanities lecture on 3 November 2022 in partnership with STIAS.