GERMAN COLONIALISM IN EAST AFRICA AND ITS AFTERMATH IN ABDULRAZAK GURNAH'S NOVELS PARADISE AND AFTERLIVES AND IN CONTEMPORARY GERMAN LITERATURE

Abstract

British author and literary scholar Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in Zanzibar in 1948 and awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021, makes significant contributions to the memory and critique of German colonialism in East Africa and its aftermath both in Tanzania and in Germany. This study examines Gurnah's novels Paradise (1994) and Afterlives (2020) for their representation of German imperial rule and its impact on Swahili society and culture and its place in the Indian Ocean universe, World War I in East Africa, the fate of askari soldiers in Weimar and Nazi Germany, and the memory and postmemory of German colonialism through to the 1960s. Gurnah's literary modelling of African experiences and memories of German colonialism is discussed in Anglo-German comparative perspective with reference to postcolonial memory discourses in contemporary German literature, including Afro-German life-writing.