Fionnáin reviewed By the sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Untangling postcolonial complexity
5 stars
It's often said that Herman Melville's Moby Dick has the perfect opening sentence, setting the scene for what is to come: "Call me Ishmael". In these three words, the narrator is revealed as a first person narrator, and as an unreliable source, giving a fake name. In By The Sea Abdulrazak Gurnah references Melville regularly through a short story Bartleby the Scrivener, which we learn at a poignant moment in this book also has different ways it can be interpreted.
By The Sea is an incredible tapestry. It has two first-person narrators. We meet the first as an old man, having arrived from Zanzibar to England, claiming asylum and pretending he does not speak English. Later, we meet the second, a younger man who arrived for refuge many years before who is now a successful academic. They once knew each other, and were entangled in family feud at home, …
It's often said that Herman Melville's Moby Dick has the perfect opening sentence, setting the scene for what is to come: "Call me Ishmael". In these three words, the narrator is revealed as a first person narrator, and as an unreliable source, giving a fake name. In By The Sea Abdulrazak Gurnah references Melville regularly through a short story Bartleby the Scrivener, which we learn at a poignant moment in this book also has different ways it can be interpreted.
By The Sea is an incredible tapestry. It has two first-person narrators. We meet the first as an old man, having arrived from Zanzibar to England, claiming asylum and pretending he does not speak English. Later, we meet the second, a younger man who arrived for refuge many years before who is now a successful academic. They once knew each other, and were entangled in family feud at home, but the complexity of this is only slowly teased out to us as readers. A short way into the book, you feel you have a complete narrative; by the end, you wonder if you even have a fraction of the truth.
Within the family and personal reflections, there is a clear consideration of the complexity of perspective in a post-colonial space. Regularly referencing Burton's translations of the stories of The Arabian Nights, it positions itself as a story that cannot escape its colonisation. This creates vitriol and paranoia in place and people, with different views on what can be interpreted as the truth always competing. Even as the book draws to a close, there is a hint that the first narrator is manipulating us and his colleague, but nothing is revealed.