Afterlives

A Novel

De: Abdulrazak Gurnah

Narrado por: Damian Lynch

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022

A NEW YORKER “ESSENTIAL READ”

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, THE NEW YORKER, BOOKPAGE, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Superb. . . . A celebration of a place and time when people held onto their own ways, and basked in ordinary joys even as outside forces conspired to take them away.” —New York Times

From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, a sweeping, multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of east Africa.

When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of east Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza, too, returns home from the war, scarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his back–until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya. As these young people live and work and fall in love, their fates knotted ever more tightly together, the shadow of a new war on another continent falls over them, threatening once again to carry them away.

Great story, abrupt and unsatisfying ending

So many good images and narratives of colonial East Africa, and certainly the not much illustrated German Ost-Africa (at least in English). Having lived on the coast of southern Kenya, I could visualize and imagine the landscape and village stories. The ending was incredibly abrupt and unsatisfying. It’s as if 20 years were summarized in a few pages and then that was that!

Disappointing

This was my first book by this author - terse style and a story that feels incomplete and poorly edited. I am rather mystified by the acclaim this book received.

Great story

I really enjoyed this book. I have something to say to each characters. Narrator is extremely excellent. Thanks to everyone behind this project.

Much more entertaining than a history book

Go into this with the perspective of learning the history of Tanzania and the surrounding region through the lives of regular people and you won’t be disappointed.

Great history and great Reader

Enjoyed the reader and the story Simple but historical The history of Africa and the colony governments