Shelter history —or at least a huge chapter of history— with literature is what Abdulrazak Gurnah has done in the books that have been published in Spain since he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. After
Paraíso
, with which we shrank our hearts while we accompanied a Tanzanian boy taken from his family to work enslaved at the order of a merchant, he continues to conquer us with the most recent,
On the Seashore
(both in Salamandra).
It is convenient to have the map at hand to read
On the shores of the sea.
I explain.
This book manages to combine two very different ambitions: On the one hand, the description of the crudeness of exile, of the sadistic conjugation of paternalism and the severity of British colonialism, of guilt over the abandonment of mothers, fathers or children who are left behind of racism.
Gurnah knows how to draw a tree in which the ramifications of misfortune coexist well with adventure, that she finds labyrinthine paths in which to reproduce between trips to places as exotic as Oman, Bahrain, India or Bangkok.
From there came to the place that today is Tanzania both the spices or the most delicate merchandise as well as the stories, the stories of the prophet or the most swindling merchants.
Reading it, it seems that those inhabitants of Gurnah's native Zanzibar lived expectantly before what the ocean brought,
contemplating the ships that crossed the Indian Ocean with merchandise or invaders and that left on its shores the most exciting stories of distant worlds.
Because later it was the turn of the Germans and the English, the two colonial forces that disputed it and that did not arrive precisely for good.
The protagonists will also take us to the GDR or to England, but not before having visited countless prisons and internment centers at the beginning of independence.
For all these reasons, it is convenient to have a map at hand to read
On the shores of the sea.
But also another map: that of human emotions, that of the desire to dream.
Because that is where the second ambition is interwoven, the most enjoyable that Gurnah brings us: the tasty and fanciful aroma of stories that evoke
The Thousand and One Nights
,
of childhoods in jars in which to fall asleep in the manner of Ali Baba, of geniuses capable of out of bottles sealed a thousand years late, to beautiful women who run dressed up to the homes of their rich lovers or to dreams of families that protect themselves and fight battles beyond their means.
That aroma will envelop us from start to finish, evocative and excited when it looks at the East, suffocating and painful when it looks at Europe and glimpses the suspicion, the buried racism and the rejection caused by the black race in an England that had no qualms about fleecing its wealth
There is great value in Gurnah's work.
There is a great denouncement of human arbitrariness that, mixed with power, can become savage in the hands of the colonizers, first, or of those who rise up with the scepter of independence, later.
An overwhelming adventure that does not disappear when you close the book, but leaves a mark.
Huge pose.
Who:
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Nobel Prize for Literature, Zanzibar (Tanzania), 1948.
What:
By the sea
(Salamandra).
Before:
Paradise
and, in September,
Life After
,
his most recent novel.
Where:
The former Zanzibar and Tanganika, which today make up Tanzania.
With echoes of Oman, Bahrain, India, China, Bangkok and exiles in the GDR or England.
When:
The story spans times from the late 19th century, when tales, merchants, and trade routes between the Gulf and Asia further afield passed through Gurnah territory, to a 20th century marked by colonialism, independence, repression , Soviet influence and exile.
How:
With a double ambition that reaches two very wide paths: geographical and emotional.
look for it in your bookstore
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