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Afterlives

Curator Reviews

Maaza Mengiste

This book drew me in slowly, gently, from the first sentence and didn’t let go until the very last. Set in the German colony of what is now Tanzania in the early 20th century, Gurnah’s novel focuses on the intimate lives of those who lived during that fraught and brutal period. The novel unwinds as the best of stories: one detail at a time, each movement so compelling that we eagerly wait for what will happen next. It lays bare the depth of violence enacted on Africans by Germans and recounts the many ways they continued to survive while never giving up on love.

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