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Fiction
Publisher:
Gyldendal
Translator:
Tone Shape
Release year:
2022
«A more accurate picture of colonial history.»
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This African perspective on the history of colonialism is the Nobel Prize winner’s literary project. In the novel from 2020, “Afterlife”, he picks up the threads and spins on some of the stories from the Booker-nominated breakthrough novel from 1994, “Paradise”. These books can almost be read as the chronological history of present-day Tanzania from the 19th century to modern times. But Gurnah’s method is to tell the little story in the big one, that is, about the lives and destinies of individuals with big politics, imperialism and the wars as a backdrop.
The strongest
It is the “footnotes” point of view that is presented here. A German officer, a self-defined superhuman, explains his self-imposed civilization mission in East Africa as follows: “That is why we are here – to take possession of what rightfully belongs to us because we are the strongest. We are dealing with a people of backward savages, and the only way to control them is by submitting to them and their vain little putt sultans with fear and beating them to obedience. “
At this time, East Africa was divided between the Europeans: British East Africa, Deutsch-Ostafrika, África Oriental Portuguesa and Congo Belge. The combat soldiers were anything but Europeans; they came from Uganda, Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Congo and India. The Germans’ tool was the African “Schutztruppen”. Their soldiers were called Askarians. The Ashkarians fought “In their blind and mortal embrace of a cause they did not know the origin of and whose purpose was in vain and would ultimately end in their own oppression,” writes Gurnah.
Gloomy and macabre from the Nobel Prize winner
Died in concentration camp
Two of the main characters in “Afterlife” are Askarians. Ilyas escaped from poverty in the village, 11 years old, was “kidnapped” by Askari soldiers at a train station, and worked on a coffee farm for a German who put him in a mission school where he learned to read, write, speak and sing in German . As an adult, he volunteered for the schutz troop. His further fate is unfortunately only briefly outlined at the end of the book. It seems so absurdly ironic that I would love to see it embroidered. Ilyas died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1942.
The other Askari, Hamza, fought with the German protection troops until the defeat and the end of the war, before returning to the nameless coastal town in what is today called Tanzania. He too had volunteered for German service. The encounter with a brutal pickaxe, with mad, drunken and medicated German officers handing out 25 lashes for the slightest offense, was to be devastating. One of them, a senior lieutenant, wanted to civilize him by teaching him German and reading Schiller, while another, a feldwebel, beat him half to death with a sword and disabled him for the rest of his life.
Genocide
The Germans were notorious for their brutality as colonial masters. Gurnah mentions, as in passing, historical uprisings which the Germans put down. The Maji Maji uprising, the war against the Hehe people in the south where they beheaded the leader Mkawa and sent it to Germany as a trophy, the al-Bushiri uprising where they captured the leader and made his hanging a public commemoration in 1888. The Germans have also received the “credit” for carrying out the first genocide of the 20th century, following an uprising in Namibia in 1904.
“Afterlife” is a story about the remains and memories from the violent colonial era. In the small story of the big one, Gurnah tells of daily life in an East African coastal town right up until the 1960 election when Julius Nyerere and his people win a majority in parliament. He depicts this life with anthropological gaze; everything from religious rituals and prayer customs, to cooking, childbirth, trade, smuggling, shortage of goods, schooling and newspaper debates are explained here. But here are also elements of traditional African tribal culture, sorceresses with sooty eyes who can evoke evil spirits with drum rituals and Koranic verses written in herbal ink.
A masterpiece
The narrative style is simple, straightforward and chronological. There are no literary features here, but all the more packed information for the enjoyment and benefit of readers who want a more accurate, multidimensional picture of European colonial history.
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