Gravel Heart: By the Winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature

This is a story that is steeped in staggering depravity and the soar of human kindness and love. From the voice and heart of a simple man, whose life story is one of learning, tolerance and humility, there is a lesson for everyone who is capable of caring for another. It even makes me want to give Shakespeare a try again!

Salim, a native of Zanzibar who migrates to London, bears the weight of tragic histories, both of his country and of his family. Either plot line could be the material for an interesting novel, but in the hands of a master story teller a reader is in for a deeply personal experience that transcends cultural differences. The result is an emotional wallop that could only come from an author with deep insight into the human soul.

A great read!

Why do we make the choices we do? This is a penetrating novel of solitude, longing and the struggles of life.

Page turner.

This is a book about rupture, the immigrant experience, love and heartbreak, and the decisions we make in life. Salim grows up thinking his father no longer loves him and not understanding why he so suddenly left his mother and him. An uncle who apparently owes something to his mother gives Salim the opportunity to move to London. When there, Salim grows tired of his uncle making all the decisions and ultimately moves out and goes his own way. Many years later, he returns to Zanzibar after his mother has died and learns the real story about what happened between his parents, and reflects briefly on the role of decisions and mistakes in how all our lives turn out.The first part of the book was lyrical as we look at Salim's early life and his reflections on his father. The part about his time in London at times had me wondering where the story was going, even if it had its interesting aspects. The time back in Zanzibar was interesting as it seems that the story of his parents is really the crux of the novel. This is not exactly an uplifting story, although not a tear-jerker either. It starts with "My father did not want me" and ends with "Some people have a use in the world, even if it is only to swell a crowd and say yeah, and some people don't." After having wrapped up the loose ends of the story, I found such a depressing final line a little disappointing. But, as I can guess the author might say, such is life.

Back in 2003, I set out on a journey that has taken me to many wonderful places: I challenged myself to read at least one book by every winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Because I read many other authors along the way, it took me 13 years to catch up and arrive at a point where I simply waited for the next winner to be announced. When I heard the news two weeks ago, I visited my local library’s website and searched for Abdulrazak Gurnah’s name. I’ll admit I had not heard of him before, but I was happy to see that my library owned copies of two of his novels, _By the Sea_ (2001) and _Gravel Heart_ (2017). The former was longlisted for the Booker Prize and is considered to be one of Gurnah’s best, so that was my initial choice, but alas, someone had already placed a hold on it, so I settled for _Gravel Heart_ instead. I enjoyed this novel very much, and even identified with it on many levels, despite the fact that I come from a very different background than that of the protagonist._Gravel Heart_ is the story of Salim, who as a young man emigrates from Zanzibar to London. The novel focuses on his relationship with his father, which we know to be problematic from the very first sentence: “My father did not want me.” As a child, all that Salim knows is that one fine day his father left the family and went to live nearby, in a rented room at the back of a shop owned by a friend. There is a sense of mystery from the start, and even though we are soon given more information about what caused Salim’s father to abandon his family, the whole truth is not revealed until the end of the novel.The novel is divided into eleven chapters, which are in turn grouped into three parts. Part I takes place in Zanzibar. We hear about Salim’s extended family, his grandparents, and how the family was affected by British rule and by the revolution of 1964, which overthrew the sultan. Throughout this part, Salim’s mother Saida is presented as a storyteller figure. “Nothing stands between us and atrocities but words,” she says, “so there is no choice but to try and imagine” (20). Saida’s brother Amir is another prominent character. A diplomat, he makes it possible for Salim to move to London, where he is to study business.Part II takes place in London. As an immigrant, I could relate to Salim’s first impressions. He is in awe of the big city, and struggles to find his place in it. I was reminded of a very different novel that traces the journey of a very different type of immigrant: Colm Tóibín’s _Brooklyn_ (please see my review). “The way I lived seems unreal,” Salim says, “like someone else’s life” (105). And regarding the language barrier: “When I spoke it sounded wrong […], as if I was making things up and my stumbling efforts were evident to everyone” (107). These observations took me back to my first months in the US… This second part of the novel is interspersed with Salim’s letters home, in which he seeks to make sense of his experience, and which serve as a connection to the past. It is at this point in the novel that Salim becomes seriously interested in literature… and in women. We follow him as he experiences confusion, rejection, love, heartbreak, and prejudice, while he makes the decisions that shape every young person for the rest of his/her life.The novel’s third part is concerned with the inevitable return, and with the meeting that the novel establishes as obligatory from its opening chapters. After so much silence, a torrent of words is unleashed, and we hear the father’s side of the story. As I read this part, I was reminded of Conrad’s monologic stories, such as _Lord Jim_ and _Heart of Darkness_, both of which I have reviewed here on Amazon. In a bold move, the author turns Salim, the narrator, into a listener during this part. Towards the end, _Gravel Heart_ establishes itself as a metatext for one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. Just as in the play, there is a villain in Gurnah’s novel… Most immigration novels deal one way or another with the impulse to return. The notion that a true return is impossible (“you can’t go home again”) is cliché, and so Gurnah does not state it. The events described illustrate it. The immigrant is displaced. When you don’t have a place anymore, you inhabit time. The immigrant cannot go back because he/she is not trying to get back to a place, but to a moment in time, and that is physically impossible. Returning to the actual place only stresses the impossibility of return: it’s not the same place, because it’s not the same time.In terms of genre, _Gravel Heart_ is an immigration novel and a condensed bildungsroman. In terms of style and subject matter, Gurnah has been compared to V. S. Naipaul, which is facile but not entirely inaccurate or unfair, as we are talking about the postcolonial experience. Gurnah is both a magnificent writer and a magnificent storyteller. The novel has just the right pace; description is precise and dialogue is not overdone. Dialogue is most often incorporated into the paragraphs, much like Gabriel García Márquez does in _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ (1967). This gives the narrative a sense of continuity. This novel is, to put it briefly, a beautifully constructed text.Look out for living spaces, i.e., the places Salim occupies as the story progresses: the family house in Zanzibar, the OAU (Organisation of African Unity) he shares with other fellow Africans in London, his own flat, the flat that was given to his mother back in Zanzibar. There is also the room his father rents at the back of the store. This is another aspect I could relate to. It seems that once an immigrant starts moving, one living space follows another. I lived in the same apartment for 16 years, until I moved to the US. The following six months, I lived in three different places. Apropos of living spaces, Here’s Salim looking back on Zanzibar from London: “I often think of the little house we lived in, and how intimate and close everything was and yet it was not stifling or oppressive. Here in this place I sometimes feel drained. The air is thick with dust and clogged with human breath and there are times I feel as if I am suffocating” (150).The title is not explained within the text. The traditional novel almost always included a passage in which the narrator alluded to the title and reflected on it. Gurnah lets the reader take care of that. Gravel as opposed to concrete? Gravel is loose, unstable, shifting. Hard, but not firm. I’m just throwing some ideas out there. I’m still thinking about it._Gravel Heart_ is a great novel that makes me want to explore other works by Gurnah. The obvious next step would be _By the Sea_, or _Paradise_ (1994), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. I’m very happy with this year’s Nobel laureate.Thanks for reading, and enjoy the book!

The delivery of the nobel prize laureate's novel was as promised. Excellent distributor

It took me a few pages before I fell under the spell of an extraordinary narrative. The story-teller born into a family in Zanzibar never understands what happened that caused his father to leave his mother. This is the underlying thread and we move through many strands of his life before this thread unravels. His life is tempered by the politics of the era, so we learn a lot about the revolution in Zanzibar, and also of British colonial rule. Personally I found it fascinating, illuminating and galling when the story-teller moves to London and has to adapt to his displacement from his family and native country. At an emotional level, the story deals with love, separation, and loss. If you want to understand the pressures that imperialism has thrust on people across the world, this book is a beautiful stark revelation.

This moving book has the quality of a Shakespearean tragedy, in it exploration of the traps, disappointments and betrayals at the heart of love, and the pain and emotional paralysis of exile. A young Zanzibari man goes to England as a student, and stays on, despite never feeling he belongs there. Over the course of the novel, he gradually learns the extraordinarily sad history of his parents’ lives, separation and deaths in the context of the wider aftermath of colonialism in Tanzania. His inexplicable self-imposed exile in England mirrors the outsider status he had in his own family and his own country. He will never belong, his loneliness is his birthright. There is no other way for him to be, and nothing to be done about it.

Having been brought up in Zanzibar myself I found this an interesting read and I suspect it is largely autobiographical but much of the plot is an admitted version of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure so I question whether it should have achieved Noble prize status.

Set in Zanzibar and London this is a wonderfully written and poignant novel, possibly Gurnah's best since 'Paradise'--and that is high praise. It tells a story of secrets gradually uncovered, of relationships destroyed and gradually restored and deepened. I was totally enthralled by this novel.

Absorbing read, very enjoyable. Gives interesting detail about Zanzibar revolution,which made me seek out history of conflict