Abdulrazak Gurnah Research Articles

Interview with Abdulrazak Gurnah Conducted at the University of Kent, Canterbury, 15 July 2005

Interview with Abdulrazak Gurnah Conducted at the University of Kent, Canterbury, 15 July 2005

The Internationalization of English Literature (review)

Reviewed by: The Internationalization of English Literature C.L. Innes The Internationalization of English Literature By Bruce KingThe Oxford English Literary History, Volume 13: 1948–2000. Oxford: Oxford University P, 2004. ISBN 0-19-818428-X. xiv + 386 pp. cloth. Few people can be better qualified than Bruce King to compile this thirteenth and ultimate volume of the Oxford Literary History, for the term "internationalization" is used here as shorthand to refer to writing by "people of colour" living in England (or occasionally, Scotland). In fact this is only the fourth volume to be published so far, and one is curious to know whether any writing by black and Asian writers living in Britain prior to 1948 will be acknowledged in earlier volumes. It is heartening, however, to see that the prestigious Oxford Literary History and its general editor, Jonathan Bate, acknowledge that the literary scene in Britain has been transformed so substantially in the past fifty years by the presence of writers of African, Caribbean, Indian subcontinental, and Sri Lankan descent that they are accorded a whole volume, and not just a paragraph or two (as in the earlier Oxford History of English Literature). King provides an authoritative, brisk, and detailed survey of the poetry, fiction, and drama produced by these writers since 1948, the year that HMS Windrush brought the first boatload of immigrants recruited from the Caribbean to work in England's hospitals, transport systems, and factories. His focus is on creative writing, rather than memoirs or political or critical essays, but he deftly places the texts within their specific historical, social, and biographical contexts. There are four major sections organized chronologically: "The End of Imperial England and the Seeds of the New, 1948–1969"; "Transformations, 1970–1979"; "Fragmentation and Internationalization, 1980–1989"; and "England's New English Literature, 1990–2000." Each of these sections is in turn divided into four parts foregrounding the political and cultural context, prose, poetry, and drama (the last often very brief). Such a structure may at times seem a little too constraining, but it has the merit of acknowledging the specificity of historical contexts and also attending to genres which are often ignored in postcolonial criticism. However, the chronological and genre divisions are not firmly adhered to. Authors are generally introduced during the period when their first publications appear, and King then gives brief accounts of all their most significant works. Thus all of Abdulrazak Gurnah's works are described in the 1980–1989 section, although his best known novels (Paradise and By the Sea) were published in the 1990s. Buchi Emecheta's writings are summarized in the section on the 1970s, though she has published nine books since 1980. While her first publications appear in the 1980s, and she has published fiction and drama as well as poetry, Jackie Kay is allocated to the 1990s poetry section. But given the constraints of space, King's decision to discuss each author's works as a whole makes sense, and offers a useful overview. The Internationalization of English Literature provides an essential resource for anyone who wishes to explore the literature produced in England during the past fifty years, and a means for scholars who wish pursue the fuller implications of its title. It allowed me to discover many new writers, and to review the careers of familiar [End Page 239] ones. King's succinct appraisals of the hundreds of writers he surveys are sometimes debatable, and he is not one to express ambivalence, but there is no comparably wide-ranging and thorough study of post-World War II writers of color in England. Scholars and students will also find immensely useful King's inclusion of biobibliographies for over sixty of the most significant writers and his suggestions for further reading. C.L. Innes Kent University, Canterbury, England Copyright © 2005 The Indiana University Press

Postcolonial Imaginings: Fictions of a New World Order

This deeply engaging, historically and culturally informed book provides new perspectives on a wide range of writers, and at the same time provides a radically new development of many of the most pertinent issues in the field of postcolonial writing and theory. It constitutes a major new engagement between the 'postcolonial' and a conception of the literary which is richly innovative in its deployment of psychoanalytic, deconstructive and other approaches to the text. The book begins with some brief background to the issue of decolonisation and its contemporary effects. It is informed throughout by a clear sense of literary and political context, within which chosen texts - by well-known writers (Derek Walcott, Chinua Achebe, Edward Kamau Brathwaite) as well as less well-known ones (Joan Riley, Susan Power, Abdulrazak Gurnah) and writers not often seen in a postcolonial context (James Kelman, Seamus Deane, Hanif Kureishi) - can be situated. The chapters which follow are based around themes such as violent geographics; hallucination, dream and the exotic; mourning and melancholy; diaspora and exile; delocalisation and the alibi. This profoundly new approach to the complexities of the postcolonial allows the reader to appreciate some of the richness, but at the same time the political and cultural ambivalence, which underlies postcolonial writing. Throughout the book David Punter continually questions, as one would expect from his many previous books, the definition and scope of the 'postcolonial'. It is seen throughout as a phenomenon not restricted to the ex- or neo-colonies but as a key characterisation of all our lives at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is an indissoluble part of the development of national imaginings and, at the same time, an alibi for the emergence of a violently assertive 'new world order' committed to the management or obliteration of difference. By juxtaposing texts from different cultural traditions and topographies, from Things Fall Apart to The Bone People, from Another Life to Feeding the Ghosts, from A House for Mr Biswas to The Black Album, David Punter points to the explosion of energy which characterises postcolonial writing while also raising crucially new questions about the relation between this literary energy, the professionalisation of Western literary criticism, the meaning of the notion of 'theory' and the wider global political and economic climate. Features: * A new and polemical engagement with the principal theorists, writers and critics of the postcolonial * A breadth of thematic approach through a radically new canon of linked studies * An approach to the postcolonial which includes the effects on colonising societies as well as on the 'ex-colonies' * An emphasis on the complexities of the 'postcolonial psyche' which brings together political and psychoanalytical approaches * An insistence on the 'phantomatic' and spectral aspects of postcolonial writing which constitutes a new critique of conventional notions of hybridity and the subaltern

Heritage as Nightmare: the Novels of Abdulrazak Gurnah

Abdulrazak Gurnah from Zanzibar has emerged since the early 1990s as one of the most important new voices in East African Anglophone fiction. This article seeks to emphasise the new perspectives opened up by a type of writing which transcends the tendency of certain cultural nationalist authors to approach questions of colonial heritage in terms of a binary logic inspired by the confrontational theories of Frantz Fanon. Gurnah belongs to another generation whose apprehension of the hybrid nature of the contemporary world is informed by the nomadic experience of forced or self-imposed exile in the West.

New Fiction in English from Africa: West, East, and South

Email: marketing@brill.com The term 'recent' or 'new' covers novels and some short fiction published between 1980 and 1995, a period characterized by growing pessimism about the state of affairs in both East and West Africa. The section on South Africa deals more narrowly with the 1985-95 watershed marking the end of official apartheid and the beginning of reconstruction. The three sections aim at giving a coherent picture of the main directions in production, highlighting three main centres of interest, Nigeria, Kenya, and the Republic of South Africa, although some novelists from neighbouring countries are also considered (such as Kofi Awoonor from Ghana, Nuruddin Farah from Somalia, and M.G. Vassanji and Abdulrazak Gurnah from Tanzania). The evaluations conducted in the three sections lead to the emergence of a number of common themes, in particular the writers' predilection for topicality, the role of the past, and the controversy over the idea of the nation. Central themes also include the role of women in fending for themselves, both in rural and in urban environments. A further major theme is the role of the past (the Nigerian civil war; the Mau Mau period in Kenya; the revisiting of slavery; the refurbishing of myth; the questioning of historical reconstructions). The preoccupation of the West, East, and South African novel with the idea and ideal of the 'nation' is explored, particularly in the context of migrancy, hybridity, and transculturalism characterizing the anglophone diaspora. The volume is aimed at literary scholars and students and, more generally, readers of fiction seeking an introduction to contemporary literary developments in various parts of sub-Saharan anglophone Africa. No categorical distinction is drawn between 'popular' and 'high' literature. Though still selective and not intended as an exhaustive catalogue, the present survey covers a large number of titles. Rather than resorting to broad and ultimately somewhat abstract thematic categories, the contributors endeavour to keep control over this mass of material by applying a 'micro-thematic' taxonomy. This approach, well-tested in the tradition of literary studies within France, groups works analytically and evaluatively in terms of such categories as actional motifs, plot-frames, and sociologically relevant locations or topics, ... For more information see http://www.brill.com/products/book/new-fiction-englishafrica-west-east-and-south-0

Exchange, bullies and abuse in Abdulrazak Gumah's paradise

Abdulrazak Gurnah's novel, Paradise, takes the reader on a troubled journey through different regions and the realities of different ethnic identifications in early 20* century East Africa. As it does so, it deals abrasively with the operation of hierarchies and prejudice among the peoples represented, challenging the reader constantly to reconsider notions of both precolonial and postcolonial cultural interaction. Ultimately, Paradise itself is a notion which enters the exchange economy, a means to entertain and give false hope to those whose lives are fixed within this economy and for whom only stories offer a compromised realm of escape or hope.

Other Britain, Other British: Contemporary Multicultural Fiction

Introduction by A Robert Lee (University of Kent at Canterbury) 1. Displacement and Transformation in 'The Enigma of Arrival' and 'The Satanic Verses' by Abdulrazak Gurnah (University of Kent at Canterbury) 2. Wintering: Making a Home in Britain by Louis James (University of Kent at Canterbury) 3. Setting up Home in a City of Words: Sam Sevlon's London Novels by Sucheila Nasta (Queen Mary and Westfield College, Univ of London) 4. Changing the Script: Sex, Lies and Videotapes in Hanif Kureishi, by David Dabydeen and Mike Phillips and A.Robert Lee 5. New Nations, New Selves: The Novels of Timothy Mo and Kazuo Ishiguro by Laura Hall (University of California at Berkeley) Long Day's Journey: The Novels of Abdulrazak Gurnah by A Robert Lee 6. Negotiating the Self: Jewish Fiction in Britain since 1945 by Michael Woolf (Director, Council for International Exchange, London) 7. 'Launcelot's Position': The Fiction of Irish-Britain by Eamonn Hughes (Queen's University Belfast) 8. 'In Search of the Lost Tribe': Janet Frame's England by Rod Edmond (University of Kent at Canterbury) 9. England from the Antipodes: Images of England in Australian Fiction, 1960-1988 by Gay Raines (University of Kent at Canterbury) Notes and References Notes on Contributors Index

Literary Reviews

Classic realism. The Time of the Hero. Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated from the Spanish by Lysander Kemp. London: Picador. 1986. 409pp. £4.50pb The Green House. Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. London: Picador. 1986. 405pp. £3.95pb Colluding with darkness. Of Love and Shadows. Isabel Allende. Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden. London: Cape. 1987. 274pp. £10.95hb The Lizard's Tail. Luisa Valenzuela. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. London: Serpent's Tail. 1987. 279pp. £7.95pb Brazilian journeys. The Land. Antônio Torres. Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Neves. London: Readers International. 1987. 136pp. £3.95pb Sergeant Getulio. Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro. Translated from the Portuguese by the author. London: Faber and Faber. 1986. 146pp. £3.95pb Macunaíma. Mário de Andrade. Translated from the Portuguese by E A Goodland. London: Quartet. 1984. 168pp. £8.95hb Philosophy and intuition. Family Ties. Clarice Lispector. Translated from the Portuguese with an Afterword by Giovanni Pontiero. Manchester: Carcanet Press. 1985. 140pp. £8.95hb/£3.50pb The Foreign Legion. Clarice Lispector. Translated from the Portuguese with an Afterword by Giovanni Pontiero. Manchester: Carcanet Press. 1986. 219pp. £8.95hb The Hour of the Star. Clarice Lispector. Translated from the Portuguese with an Afterword by Giovanni Pontiero. Manchester: Carcanet Press. 1986. 96pp. £8.95hb Western filters. Genesis. Eduardo Galeano. Translated from the Spanish by Cedric Belfrage. London: Methuen. 1987. 293pp. £3.95pb Cultures of resistance. The Last Song of Manuel Sendero. Ariel Dorfman. Translated from the Spanish by George R Shivers with the author. New York: Viking. 1987. 450pp. S18.95hb Power and polemics. End Papers. Breyten Breytenbach. London: Faber and Faber. 1986. 270pp. £12.50hb Mating Birds. Lewis Nkosi. London: Constable. 1986. 184pp. £8.95hb The Scaffold. Edward Lurie. London: Zed Books. 1986. 237pp. £4.95pb A mind of winter. Memory of Departure. Abdulrazak Gurnah. London: Cape. 1987. 159pp. £9.95hb Yoruba destinies. Pauper, Brawler and Slanderer. Amos Tutuola. London: Faber and Faber. 1987. 156pp. £9.95hb/£3.95pb Shared history: novels from the francophone Caribbean. The Ripening. Edouard Glissant. Translated from the French by Michael Dash. London: Heinemann Educational Books. 1985. 195pp. n/p Cathedral of the August Heat: A Novel of Haiti. Pierre Clitandre. Translated from the French by Bridget Jones. London: Readers International. 1987. 159pp. £8.95hb/£4.95pb A Caribbean poet questing. Mother Poem. 1977. 122pp. £3.95pb Sun Poem. 1982. 104pp. £4.95pb X/Self. 1987. 131pp. £6.95pb Edward Kamau Brathwaite Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fatal passivity: women in Arabic fiction. From Sleep Unbound. Andree Chedid. Translated from the French by Sharon Spencer. London: Serpent's Tail. 1987. 160pp. £4.95pb The Story of Zahra. Hanan al‐Shaykh. Translated from the Arabic by Peter Ford with the author. London: Pavanne. 1986. 184pp. £2.95pb Death of an Ex‐Minister. Nawal El Saadawi. Translated from the Arabic by Shirley Eber. London: Methuen. 1987. 110pp. £9.50hb/£2.95pb Rival unrealities. Sorraya in a Coma. Esmail Fassih. Translated from the Persian. London: Zed. 1985. 287pp. £9.95hb/£4.95pb Indian truths. Truth Tales. Edited by Kali for Women. London: Women's Press. 1987. 201pp. £8.95hb/£3.95pb Stories. Satyajit Ray. Translated from the Bengali by the author. London: Secker and Warburg. 1987. 190pp. £10.95hb