Where to Start with Abdulrazak Gurnah: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Abdulrazak Gurnah — whether to begin with Paradise, By the Sea, or Afterlives. A complete reading guide to the Nobel Prize-winning Zanzibari novelist.
Abdulrazak Gurnah (born 1948) is the Tanzanian-British novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021 — recognised for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures. Gurnah grew up in Zanzibar and came to England as a political exile in 1968; his ten novels explore East African history, the Swahili coast, the impact of German and British colonialism on the region, and the experience of refugees and exiles in contemporary Britain. His fiction is characterised by a precise, elegant prose style, deep historical knowledge of East Africa, and a moral intelligence about the specific forms of loss and displacement that colonial history creates. His most important novels — Paradise (1994), shortlisted for the Booker Prize, By the Sea (2001), and Afterlives (2020) — bring a corner of the world rarely represented in literary fiction into full, specific life.
Where to Start: Paradise (1994)
The essential Gurnah — the novel that established his international reputation and the book most readers recommend as his finest. Yusuf is twelve years old when his father, in debt to the merchant Aziz, leaves him as a pawn in settlement of that debt. Yusuf joins Aziz’s household on the Swahili coast of East Africa at the end of the nineteenth century, travels with the merchant’s trading caravans into the interior, and grows into early manhood in a world that is beginning to change in ways that no one in it can fully see.
The German colonial presence is on the edge of the novel’s world — arriving, consolidating, transforming — while Yusuf’s story is about the specific beauty of the East African world that colonial disruption will destroy: the mixed Swahili culture of Arab, African, and Indian influences; the trading economy that has organised East African life for centuries; the specific textures of landscape, food, and human relationship that Gurnah renders with extraordinary care.
The novel draws on the Quranic story of Yusuf (sold into slavery by his brothers, unjustly imprisoned, eventually redeemed) and the Biblical Joseph — Yusuf’s beauty, his servitude, and the desires it provokes echo the sacred narratives without becoming allegory. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994; still the richest introduction to Gurnah’s world.
By the Sea (2001)
Gurnah’s most accessible novel for Western readers — a refugee story set in contemporary England in which two Zanzibari men, strangers to each other, discover they are connected by a decades-old betrayal. The English asylum system is rendered with dry precision; the Zanzibar that both men carry in memory is rendered with love.
Afterlives (2020)
Gurnah’s most recent major novel before the Nobel Prize — set in German East Africa during World War One, following former askari soldiers and their families through colonial violence and its aftermath. His most accessible historical fiction.
Desertion (2005)
A multigenerational novel linking a colonial-era love affair in Zanzibar with its descendants’ search for understanding — Gurnah’s most explicitly romantic work and a moving meditation on what history does to individual lives.
Reading Abdulrazak Gurnah
Begin with Paradise for the richest introduction to his world, or By the Sea for the most accessible contemporary setting. Afterlives is the best starting point for readers specifically interested in the colonial period. All his novels are standalone.
For the full Abdulrazak Gurnah bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Abdulrazak Gurnah author page on Editors Reads.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Abdulrazak Gurnah?
Paradise (1994) is the most widely recommended starting point — Gurnah's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel about Yusuf, a twelve-year-old left as a debt-pawn with a merchant on the Swahili coast as German colonial rule begins to transform East Africa. The novel draws on the Quranic Yusuf and Biblical Joseph stories while creating a richly specific portrait of East African culture and landscape at the moment of colonial disruption. By the Sea is the alternative for readers who prefer a contemporary British setting with a refugee narrative.
What is By the Sea about?
By the Sea (2001) is Gurnah's novel about an elderly Zanzibari refugee who arrives at an English airport claiming asylum and pretending not to speak English, and a Zanzibari exile who has lived in England for years and is asked to translate. The two men share a history and a secret, and their meeting becomes an excavation of memory, betrayal, and the specific silences that allow people to live with what they have done. His most accessible novel for Western readers unfamiliar with his East African settings.
What is Afterlives about?
Afterlives (2020) is set in German East Africa in the early twentieth century, following Ilyas — taken as a child by German colonial troops and who served as an askari — as he returns to his village and finds his sister Afiya living in servitude. Their lives intersect with Hamza, another askari damaged by German service, as World War One erupts across East Africa. Gurnah's most recent novel before the 2021 Nobel Prize was awarded; widely considered his most accessible historical fiction.
Is Gurnah difficult to read?
Gurnah is not formally difficult — he writes in a clear, elegant prose that is accessible to general readers and does not require specialist knowledge of East African history, though familiarity with the region enriches the reading. His novels are demanding in the sense that they ask readers to engage with a part of the world and a history that receives little attention in Western literary culture, and to understand the specific form that colonial violence took in East Africa. Readers who approach his work with openness typically find it deeply rewarding.
