Desertion

The title can indicate the end of East African colonialism and the vicissitudes of love. Both euphoric experiences dissipate with the coming of political and social realities. The brief happiness of independence and romance sustain them across bland, desperate times. The saga covers three generations of Zanzibaris, English, and Mombasans. The author unravels the surprising relations at the end. Curiosity prompted my inquiry into the geography, clothing, and history of the area. Gurnah reveres literary arts. Characters create prose, poetry, and letters while he plays with a passage from Leopold Sédar Senghor.

Desertion is a gripping novel that tackled themes of colonialism, particularly the impact on a country when the colonial power pulls out, and issues of race in relationships. The novel is framed by two forbidden love affairs which underline the impact of prejudice, of different kinds, on the lovers. There are subtle references to Zanzibar's history and the impact of certain events on the characters. A very compelling novel with lyrical prose and memorable characters.

I first learned about this book from Essence Magazines best sellers list. I read a brief synopsis and decided to purchase the book because it seemed interesting and Essence is rarely wrong. This book was amazing. Its a bit hard to get into at first but I loved it. It was beautifully written. Kudos!

What begins as a literary novel of love and passion across the barriers of race and culture becomes something more - and less - in Gurnah's restrained and capable hands. The novel begins in 1899 in a small coastal town near Mombassa when a Muslim storekeeper stumbles over a comatose Englishman in the early morning hours. He has the unconscious man brought to the home he shares with his young wife and beautiful, embittered sister, Rehana. When the British colonial establishment, in the person of the usual ignorant, racist, self-satisfied man of Empire, hears of the injured man, he hurries to fetch him away and settle him in a proper white man's establishment. The patient quickly recovers and identifies himself as Martin Pearce, something of a wanderer and orientalist, who had been robbed and abandoned by his Somali guides. Pearce is a sensitive man, adept at languages and interested in cultures other than his own. Perceiving that his British rescuer undoubtedly offended his local rescuer, Pearce goes on his own to thank the man. Invited to a meal, he is smitten with Rehana. Rehana is in a difficult position. Her husband disappeared on a trading journey. He may be dead, he may have deserted her. She lives in an isolated limbo, dependent on her brother, her future bleak. And just as she takes a step to return the Englishman's attraction, the heretofore invisible narrator interrupts, the narrative jumps forward 50 years, and he sums up Rehana's fate in a few short pages, baffled as to how she could do it, how she could run off to Mombassa with an Englishman who would, and did, leave her to her disgrace. "Perhaps she thought she had nothing to lose, that all that remained for her was a lifetime in that bright yard behind the shop, making clothes for women who only paid her a pittance, or only offered her affection and promises in return. That does not sound so intolerable, really, not for a woman who had lived her whole life in the back of a shop in that town, and who was used to women's lives such as hers." For Rashid, the narrator, born long after Rehana is dead and buried, her story is chiefly of interest for its impact on his older brother Amin and the peripheral involvement of his sister, Farida. Amin falls in love with Jasmina, the granddaughter of Martin Pearce and Rehana. There are several strikes against her - she is older and has previously been married, but in their conservative society she inherited a taint and was doomed to be fast and loose from the day she was born. In other words, his parents are adamant that Jasmina is unfit to marry their Amin. Rashid, several years younger and largely oblivious to the drama enveloping his brother and family, is bent on going to Oxford to study. He succeeds in doing this, leaving shortly after his parents have derailed Amin and Jasmina's secret love affair. From afar he celebrates his country's independence from Britain and then the spiral into chaos and violence that makes him an exile rath

When Martin Pearce, an Englishman nearly dead from thirst, staggers out of the desert and into the life of Hassanali, a shopseller in a village south of Mombasa, he sets in motion events and themes which echo throughout the novel. It is 1899, and Pearce has been traveling on foot for four days. Believing that "This [man] was a burden [God] had...chosen for him," Hassanali enlists his wife Malika, and his sister Rehana to help care for him until a local British official brings him back to "civilization." When Pearce returns to thank Hassanali, he becomes enamored of Rehana, and their eventual affair becomes a scandal in both the British and the Indian/Muslim communities. Part II, which takes place fifty years later in Zanzibar, focuses on a new set of characters--two brothers, Amin and Rashid, and their sister Farida. The story of Amin's love for Jamila, which soon unfolds, bears some resemblance to that of Pearce and Rehana--both loves involve cultural and religious taboos and raise questions about the ability of love to survive such difficulties. Part III, which further develops the stories of Amin, Rashid, and Farida, takes place about fifteen years after that. Amin is still in Zanzibar, while Rashid is studying in England. The British have granted Zanzibar independence, but a revolution has taken place. The traumas of this period and its bloodshed, primarily in the 1970s, keep the brothers apart, and, because of censorship in Zanzibar, their communications are difficult and vague. "A Continuation," the five-page epilogue, eventually connects all the stories and resolves some unanswered questions. Illustrating, to some extent, the effects of colonialism, along with desertions and displacements in the characters' lives, Gurnah concentrates primarily on stories of family, courtship, and relationships--ordinary people living their daily lives. His style is smooth and descriptive, conjuring the moods and images of different times and places, but structurally, the novel feels like three separate stories, rather than a continuous whole. The characters we meet in Part I (the most exciting part) are never mentioned again until the five-page epilogue, and that epilogue, which connects the various stories, depends on coincidence for its surprises and feels artificial. Individually, the stories, told primarily by Rashid, are intriging, but they feel more like three separate novellas than one unified novel. n Mary Whipple