
Afterlives
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Damian Lynch
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022
A NEW YORKER “ESSENTIAL READ”
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, THE NEW YORKER, BOOKPAGE, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS
“Superb. . . . A celebration of a place and time when people held onto their own ways, and basked in ordinary joys even as outside forces conspired to take them away.”—New York Times
From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, a sweeping, multigenerational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of East Africa.
When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of East Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza, too, returns home from the war, scarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his back—until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya.
As these young people live and work and fall in love, their fates knotted ever more tightly together, the shadow of a new war on another continent falls over them, threatening once again to carry them away.
©2020 Abdulrazak Gurnah (P)2022 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
“Superb. . . . Afterlives is a celebration of a place and time when people held onto their own ways, and basked in ordinary joys even as outside forces conspired to take them away. . . . [Gurnah] is a novelist nonpareil, a master of the art form who understands human failings in conflicts both political and intimate—and how these shortcomings create afflictions from which nations and individuals continue to suffer, needlessly, generation after generation.”—New York Times Book Review
“At once a globe-spanning epic of European colonialism and an intimate look at village life in one of the many overlooked corners of the Earth. Both parts—reclamations of history and heart—are equally revelatory. . . . Gurnah’s greatest act of love and artistry [is] his ability to gather the fragments of broken lives and create a breathtaking mosaic in print.”—The Washington Post
“An appreciation for quiet, ordinary forms of heroism runs throughout. . . . One can take away lessons and meanings from this novel, yet such things are perhaps less significant than the sheer seeming realness of the characters, whose presences Mr. Gurnah has faithfully crafted into existence, with all of their dreaming, their sorrow and their resilience.”—Wall Street Journal
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An excellent listen
Enlightening
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Very Disappointing Despite the Hype
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It would have helped to have key names spelled out for reference while reading.
Enlightening portrayal
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Great story, abrupt and unsatisfying ending
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Disappointing
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Great story
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Much more entertaining than a history book
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Great history and great Reader
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Interesting Topic
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Some characterizations were minimal and were of less importance than the thread of the story. Plot was simple also. The strength of the novel was in seeing the affect the long history had on main characters and how they coped with German and British rule. The story showed the contrast between the European's dispraging view of African people and the reality of the competence of African's and the success of the African civilizations.
Remarkanble history
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