Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah: A Review

 

Now, I get an inkling why Abdulrazak Gurnah got the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is a beautiful novel, Gravel Heart, and is also the first Gurnah title I have read. 

"I don't know why you want to study literature. I don’t know where this idea came from. It’s a pointless subject.” This statement by Uncle Amir, said to the protagonist, Salim Masud Yahya, when he admits that he had no business studying finance in the university, sent me into hysterics. Every African literature student must have encountered this argument at one point in their careers. At some other point, the narrator says, “What is the point of literature? I think that the person who asks that question will not find my answer convincing.” 

The unspoken family secret that simultaneously unsettles and binds Salim’s maternal extended family is treated with such sensitivity and adequate suspense, as only a skilled writer can, and should. 

Salim’s migration to the United Kingdom forms the major part of the story. His story illustrates the racism, and the difficulty of an African finding love in 1980s (?) Britain. His encounter with a white lady is simultaneously appalling and hilarious: “One of them was pulling my shirt and reaching into my jeans, that she would have gone to bed with me if I weren’t black, but since I was, she wouldn’t. I asked if she would do it if I were Chinese. She thought about it for a moment and said she would. She went back to snogging me after that and I made no effort to resist even though honour required that I should repel her and walk hauntingly away.” Lust almost never fails to disgrace men sometimes. 

There is of course the examination of “revolutionaries” on the African continent in the 1970s and 1980s: “They speak a familiar language of freedom, but plan to enforce it with violence.” And of course, after they succeed, “All the children of the powerful were being groomed to be powerful. That is what families do, if for no other reason than to ensure the security of their plunder. That’s how things are.” There is the keenly observed “progress” made in this regard, as the West demands more from African leaders, as Salim notes: “Now they all wear suits and ties because they want to look like statesmen, but then everyone wanted to look like a guerrilla.” 

My single grouse with the novel? I wish it were easier to decipher the timeline of the story in relation to the reality of Zanzibar; the timeline seemed all over the place, perhaps it is deliberate to show the flexibility of memory.

I really enjoyed reading the novel, and the regular wisdoms shared (“Our doubts are traitors,” or as Bibi, Salim’s maternal grandmother used to say, “This is the burden we all have to bear, to live a useful life.”) The finality of death, “Dying is such a degrading business.” 

I look forward to reading other titles by Abdulrazak Gurnah.