Admiring Silence

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021**

A "corrosively funny and relentless" (The New York Times) tale of cultural identity and displacement, Admiring Silence is the story of a man's dual lives as a refugee from his native Zanzibar in England.

The unnamed narrator of this dazzling novel escapes from Zanzibar to England knowing that he will probably never return. In his new country, things are not quite as he imagined – the school where he teaches is cramped and violent, and he quickly forgets how it feels to belong.

But when he meets a beautiful, rebellious woman named Emma, and when Emma, turns away from her white, middle-class roots to offer him love and bear him a child, the narrator chooses to hide his past from his new family and his present circumstance from his family back in Zanzibar.

Twenty years later, when the barriers at last come down in Zanzibar, he is compelled to go back. What he discovers there, in a story potent with truth, will change the entire vision of his life.

Genres: Fiction, Africa, Nobel Prize, African Literature, Tanzania, Literature, Novels

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948 in Zanzibar and lives in England, where he teaches at the University of Kent. The most famous of his novels are Paradise, shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea, longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents".

Reviews

[Hakan · Rating 4 out of 5]

tek eksiği var bu romanın: gurnah’ın klasik anlamda “büyük roman”ı denememesi, zorlamaması. on beş yıl aradan sonra bu romana geri dönüp başka bir romanla “nehir roman”a dönüştürmesi çok çok anlaşılır ancak sessizliğe hayranlık’ın içinde kalan başka bir şey, kalmaya devam edecek bir şey.

öncelikle, sadece gurnah’ın değil, tüm edebiyatın, belki tüm sanatın, her şeyin ve hepimizin meselesi, en büyük meselesi etrafında dönüyor romanın dünyası: aidiyet. aidiyete, ait olmaya dair hemen her şey incelikle, yumuşaklıkla, “organik olarak” dahil romana. birey, aile, vatan ve tüm dünya. dışarıdaki ve içerideki dünya. açık ve kapalı dünya. yalnız ve kalabalık dünya. bomboş ve içinde yer olmayan dünya. “kahramanın yolculuğu” bu dünyalar arasında. haliyle anlatısı daha çok manzaraya, daha geniş alana, daha geniş zamana ihtiyaç duyuyor bu yolculuğun. gurnah, bize bu yolculuğu hissettiren gurnah, gösterimini kısa ve hızlandırılmış tutuyor gibi.

hissettirmek zor olan aslında: deneyimin gücü, gözlem bilgisi, bilginin içselleştirilmişliği, özümsenmişliği, inceltilmişliği. bunlar var gurnah’ta. büyük romancı olmasa da özel bir yazar.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

These things matter, although there is no gainsaying postcolonial reality. It was not just littered beaches that made me lament, not just mis-remembering what seemed a more orderly way of conducting our affairs than the reckless self-indulgence of our wordy times, when we can chat away every oppression and every dereliction, not just a nostalgia for the authoritarian order of Empire which can make light of contradictions by issuing dictats and sanitation decrees, but because as I wandered over the rubble of the damaged town I felt like a refugee from my life. The transformations of things I had known and places which I had lived with differently in my mind for years seemed like an expulsion from my past.

The 5th novel by the 2021 Nobel Prize Literature winner

From the Nobel Citation

In Gurnah’s treatment of the refugee experience, focus is on identity and self-image, apparent not least in Admiring Silence (1996) and By the Sea (2001). In both these first-person novels silence is presented as the refugee’s strategy to shield his identity from racism and prejudice, but also as a means of avoiding a collision between past and present, producing disappointment and disastrous self-deception. In the first of these two novels, the prejudiced narrator choses to hide his past from his English family and invent a life story better suited to their commonly constructed world. But it is a twinned silence since he is also hiding his life in exile from his family in Zanzibar, who are unaware that he has a new family in England and a seventeen-year-old daughter.

The first party narrator of the story is an unnamed forty-two year old man who just after completing school, and with the reluctant acquiescence of his family, left Zanizbar for England (via a fake Kenyan passport and a Student Visa) a few years after the post-independence revolution (when black African revolutionaries violently overthrew and then suppressed the mainly Arabic ruling class and South Asian-dominated economic system).

Now, he is working as a teacher and living with an white middle-class English girl – Emma (with very conventional parents – the strong implication being that Emma has chosen to live with him unmarried to rebel against their expectations); the two now have a seventeen year-old daughter who treats him (since she was fourteen) with typical teenage disappointment/pity/contempt, and their marriage has largely resorted to bickering. The narrator has just received a diagnosis of heart problems and a letter from his family in Zanzibar pointing out that due to a change of government an amnesty has been declared on illegal emigrants – so making possible his return after twenty plus years.

The first section of the book is set in England, the second in Zanzibar and the third on the transition back.

The book is really about exile and how long-term exiles can end up alienated and exiled from both their original and adopted country. In the narrators case this feeling is exacerbated by what the Nobel citation describes as his twin silences (or which may be better seen as a mixture of storytelling in England and silence towards Africa).

In England the narrator quickly realises that the only way to deal with the ingrained and casual racism of Emma’s father (something she is horrified by but which he takes almost for granted) is to appeal to his nostalgic and colonial sense of Empire – by emphasising all of the advantages accruing to him and his country pre-independence. But also as the author fills us in on his history and family background in Zanzibar – as known to Emma (and which appeals to her liking for the exotic and the non-British) we sense that this also is storytelling (that his back story is exactly that) – embellished for Emma’s sake but cleverly also embellished for the sake of an English reader of the novel.

And we also know, although Emma does not, that the reason that his mother or family have never sent greeting to her or Amelia is not indifference or disapproval – but simply that they have no idea they exist as the narrator has kept his English life completely hidden in his sporadic and sketch letters home.

And when he returns to Zanzibar – not only does he have to work out when to tell his family (who are busy arranging marriage), he also has to come to terms with an original home that is very different from the one he left (corrupt leaders, rampant corruption, almost non-functioning infrastructure) and deal with his views on his new adopted home (particularly when viewed at a distance).

‘I still am,’ I said. I couldn’t be bothered to explain. ‘And while I was away I began to understand that that is how I think of England. My life with her. And I began to be afraid that we have allowed things to go too far between us, and when I came back she would no longer be there and she would have taken what I know of my life here away with her. It’s more complicated than that, but what you said about disappointed love sounded familiar.’

He realises in effect that he has become an exile from his own life – distanced by the aftermath of colonialism (as well it has to be said by his own choices – and particularly his unwillingness to speak up) from both his past and present – leaving an uncertain future.

There is much to like on this book.

It intelligently and imaginatively explores many of the themes that Gurnah returns to again and again in his work – exile, asylum, refugees, colonialism, identity and story telling and how these all interact particularly between Zanzibar and England – themes best summarised (as it was in the summary Nobel award) as the “effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.

I was pleasantly surprised by the humour in the book – for all his silence in front of others, the narrator is admirably humourous in his internal dialogue on the British and their attitudes to race and Empire – he also accurately skewers his increasingly fractious and fractured family.

As he returns to Zanzibar though the internal-observational humour becomes more bitter and darker as he sees the silent acquiescence and almost acceptance of the decay of his home Island – a silence forced by state corruption and brutality and by the implicit consent of the ex-colonial powers happy to keep their former possessions at a distance.

In the meantime, the moneybags who rule our world can continue with the anguished business of watching our antics on TV, and reading about our ineptitudes and murders in their newspapers, secure in the knowledge that a small donation here to fund a translation project and a modest shipment of arms there will keep the plague in the thirsty borderlands of their globe and away from their doors.

I think the fact I found the narrator’s tales of Zanzibar as told in England more entertaining and engrossing than the reality was I think deliberate on the author’s behalf (see comments above).

The humour turns unnecessarily scatalogical during the plane flight home, when the narrator describes in rather tediously repetitive detail a flatulent fellow passenger – but this (together with the failing plumbing which stands for the narrator as the sign of Zanzibar’s decay) does later segue into a discussion of plumbing and the comment that “Sometimes it seems that any idea of any value first occurred to an Englishman, especially (though not exclusively) in the era of Good Queen Bess: cricket, ale pie, the slave trade, table-tennis, colonialism, kedgeree, gravity, sociology, and, not least, the flush toilet.” – which links back to the idea of the stories the English tell themselves of their history, and their disavowal of the after-effects of slavery and colonialism and happy to flush the problem away and to instead remember stories of the abolition of slavery and the civilising impacts of Empire.

Overall an interesting novel - and a fascinating insight into the work of the Nobel laureate. 3.5 rounded up.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

But I am so afraid of disturbing this fragile silence.

I wanted to go to Zanzibar, Tanzania and also head over to Kenya. I thought I would have been able to do it this year, but the world had its own plans. So of course, I enjoyed how real Tanzania felt in this novel, how sensory details carefully unfolded once the narrator returned home. Besides being nicely situated near the sea, there is rich history intermingled with the spice trade in this region. Persian, Indian, and Arab traders used Zanzibar as a center for their travel through the Middle East, India, and Africa. It's not often that you hear about this population makeup. In the novel, it is referred to as an

"Arab African Indian Comorian: we lived alongside each other, quarrelled and sometimes intermarried...In reality we were nowhere near we, but us in our separate yards, locked in our historical ghettoes, self-forgiving and seething with intolerances, with racisms, and with resentments. And politics brought all that into the open."

There's something profound about the subtleties in this book that I liked better than in By the Sea. The main character is a middle-aged man who has lost all he knew and must rebuild his life in a fragmented way. Everything he has earned came from his lack of freedom and his ability to make use of opportunities set before him. He is indecisive, frightened, isolated. After leaving his homeland in Tanzania, he lives and teaches in England. He doesn't like the school where he is scorned by teachers and students, a career that stems from an education he wouldn't have chosen if it hadn't been the opportunity afforded him. He is in love with a British woman who has become his partner, despite how her parents feel. He lives without family, without ties to his homeland. Together he and Emma, his partner, build a life from fragments, fragments that form cracks in a frame that soon threatens to become shards.

As if I was not already lost and stolen and shipwrecked and mangled beyond recognition anyway. As if home and belonging were anything more than a willful fiction when there was no possibility of them being real again. As if they were anything more than debilitating stories that turned everything into moments of reprise that disabled and disarmed.

You sympathize with him and you also want to kick him, especially at a point in the story when it's clear he's found what he's been looking for, but his fragility causes him to hesitate. It's usually a bit difficult to dutifully follow the perspective of an unreliable narrator who is also subtly satirical, but once I read this novel after reading By the Sea I had the thought that Abdulrazak Gurnah might be an underrated writer. This is the usual tale about family, love, a struggling relationship, the loss of identity, but with more complexity. The couple is symbolic, their struggle thematic, the main character's introspection distilling. The introspection and element of surprise will be either alluring or off-putting when you're halfway through the book and realize that there is another deep-seated story causing you to strip away pieces of what you thought you knew. For me, it was the former.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Çok narin yazılmış bir kitap. Kelimelerin ağırlığı..
mülteci/göçmen olmanın sorunu -bence- ne gittiğiniz ne de geldiğiniz yere ait olamama hissi ve yazar çok başarılı vermiş bu hissi. Toksik bir ilişki, ailenin hala hayatımıza dahil olabilme hakkı, siyasi gerginlik.. hepsi o kadar güzel geçmiş ki iç içe.. ve kahramanımız silik, sessiz ve aslında yok gibi. Bayıldım.
Çeviri de o kadar güzel ki orijinal dilinden okumuşum gibi bir his. Ah inanılmazdı ya.

[Bbrown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last week the Swedish Academy did what they often do and awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Literature to an author I'd never even heard of, in this case Abdulrazak Gurnah. Having now finished Admiring Silence, my conclusion is that Gurnah's win was well deserved, but I doubt I'll ever read another of his books.

To briefly summarize this work, the narrator of Admiring Silence is a native of Zanzibar that made his way to London and started a life there. He's a creature split between the worlds of his homeland and that of his adopted home, and he's been feeding each world lies about the other. For his English wife and her family the narrator makes up stories of his childhood that paint his homeland as a caricature of what it really is, and he's especially eager to feed tales to his father-in-law that satiate the man's nostalgia for Britain's bygone era of empire. For his family remaining in Zanzibar the narrator's lies are ones of omission, as he portrays himself as a bachelor even when he has a child that’s almost old enough to attend university. Lurking beneath all of these lies is the narrator’s hidden hatred of seemingly everything, mixed with a desperation not to lose a life that’s already already largely succumbed to wrack and ruin. When the narrator returns home to Zanzibar halfway through the novel (something I would normally hide as a spoiler, but it’s revealed in Admiring Silence’s blurb) his lifetime of lies comes to a head, but not before the narrative hammers home just how much of a misanthropic coward he is.

Admiring Silence is certainly a thought provoking book, perhaps the most thought provoking book I’ve read all year. Through the narrator’s inner turmoil the work makes you consider how disheartening it must be to realize that you’ve chosen life in the country that used to oppress your homeland over life in that homeland. Furthermore, how frustrating must it be to see that life in the colonist’s country is better than life in your homeland, and for you to hunger for the comforts the country provides even with that knowledge? And when you return to your homeland after a long absence to find everything far worse than it was under colonial oppression, imagine the hopelessness that would engender. The narrator’s hatred includes self-hatred, and the narrative makes you understand why. The book additionally and inevitably raises the issue of racism, pervasive and insidious in England, but blatantly present in Zanzibar as well. Admiring Silence explores the immigrant experience, the post-colonial experience, as well as the general feeling of alienation in modern life (magnified by the narrator’s particular circumstances). It does all this without spoon feeding you and with above average prose. If this is representative of Gurnah’s work as a whole then his Nobel Prize win is not just understandable, but warranted.

All that being said, I didn’t actually like reading Admiring Silence at all. Almost every single character is unlikeable, with the narrator going far beyond being unlikeable and quickly becoming almost unbearable. He hates everything, even his own family, and laments the state of his life even though he’s seemingly brought it all down on himself. Him being a habitual liar doesn’t help. At least at the end of the book the narrator proves himself to be somewhat self aware, as he breaks down in tears mostly “for the shambles I had made of my life, for what I had already lost and for what I feared I was still to lose.”

To be clear, I believe that Gurnah meant to make the narrator unlikeable, or at least that this story of self-hatred arising from being torn between worlds meant that the main character would inevitably be unlikeable. But that intentionality doesn’t make the book any more enjoyable to read. Unlike the Swedish Academy, I don’t primarily read to identify the important works of literature, I read for entertainment. The book’s thought provoking nature provided substantial entertainment value for me, but that was really the only thing that got me to finish this work. Otherwise, a bunch of unlikeable characters doing uninteresting things in a shitty world isn’t my idea of a good read.

I’m glad I gave Gurnah a try, and Admiring Silence demonstrates that he is a good writer who is speaking to some important experiences of our time, but it also demonstrates that he’s not my cup of tea. His works might be a great subject for academic study, but I can’t imagine many people being excited to read those same works in their free time. 3/5, but only because I value things that are thought provoking so highly. I suspect many people would like this even less than I did.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've just finished this novel and realised that I never knew our protagonists name, flicking back through the pages I don't think we are ever told.

We do know he is in his forties. He teaches in the UK and has a failing heart. We also know his family in Zanzibar has no idea he lives with an English woman and has a 17-year-old daughter.

This feels very much like a character study, how silence can wrap itself around unsaid words and snowball. How assumptions can create a narrative and break hearts on all corners.

While I like the concept and looking back over the story, I like it. This author is very wordy and can create a paragraph out of a simple sentence that feels tedious at times.

Three stars.

[Pia G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5/4.

[Meltem Sağlam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yazarın okuduğum ilk kitabı. Kitabın ilk bölümünü çok zor okudum ve okuduklarım, yazara karşı olumsuz bir önyargı geliştirmeme neden olmuştu. Ancak takip eden sayfalarda; yazarın rafine cümlelerine, ilişkilerdeki ruh durumlarına ilişkin iki yönlü anlam incelemelerine, paylaşılan ve paylaşılırken yeniden yazılan anıların ve ‘kurgu söylemlerin’ altında yatan güdülerin incelikli anlatımına ve betimlemelerin şiirselliğine bayıldım. Yazarın; ‘farklı’ insanlara yabancı bir ülkedeki önyargılı bakışı ve bu bakışın yarattığı duyguların üstesinden gelebilmek için uyguladığı ‘özel yöntemleri’ ele alış tarzı beni çok etkiledi.

Yazar kitabında, doğduğu ülkeden ayrılmak zorunda kalmış insanların uyum sorunlarını, değişen hayatlarında ‘ev’ tanımı konusunda içine düştükleri çelişkili ruh durumlarını ve sömürge ülkelerin hem sömürge dönemlerinde, hem de sömürge dönemi sonrasında karşı karşıya kaldığı sorunları, ironik ve mizahi bir dille anlatıyor. Anlatımının arka planında -belki de tam ortasında-, dönemin siyasi aktörlerinin eylemlerinin sonuçları var elbette. Ve bu süreç hiç bir şekilde bir tarih anlatımı şeklinde verilmiyor, metin içinde rahatsız etmiyor, metinle bütünleşiyor.

Başka bir ülkede, bir yabancının, yerleşiklerce hissedilmeyen tereddütlere ilişkin temkinli adımlarını, davranışlarını ve sessiz söylemlerini, en gerçek halleriyle, duygu sömürüsü yapmadan, mizahi bir dille anlatması, çok etkileyici.

Göçmenlere ve göçe farklı bir bakış açısı kazandırıyor.

Akıcı anlatımın, yazarın mükemmel ‘anlatma yeteneği’nin yanı sıra, çeviriyi gerçekleştiren Müge Günay’ın muhteşem Türkçe’sinden de kaynaklandığını düşünüyorum.

Bir yazar daha keşfetmenin mutluluğu içindeyim.

Mutlaka okunmalı.

[Argos]

A. Gurnah Nobel ödülünün çok yakıştığı bir yazar. Kadife gibi yumuşak, saten gibi parlak, ipek gibi kayıcı cümleleri ile özgün bir dili var. Ayrıntıları metnin içine çok güzel yerleştiriyor. Romancı olarak başımın üstünde yeri oldu. Kitaba gelince; hikaye çok bilindik hatta kaba tabirle beylik, siyahi bir Afrikalı müslüman erkek ile beyaz İngiliz Hristiyan kadının birlikteliklerinin zorlukları, sorunları, aileler arası uçurumlar vb. Ayrıca kendini bir yere ait hissetmemek, aksine yersiz-yurtsuz hissetmek, göç ve mülteci olmanın sıkıntıları irdelenmekte, bu duyguların yarattığı travmalar anlatılmakta.

Konusu nedeniyle az çok bir sonra ki sayfada ne yazacağını hissederek okudum hep ve bu nedenle keyif alarak okumakta zorlandım. Hacimli olmayan kitap uzun süre elimde dolaştı. Bu kadar başarılı ve iyi bir kaleme sahip olan Gurnah’a haksızlık olmasın diye kitabı bırakamadım belki, ama kitaba bir türlü giremedim, ısınamadım, zorladım ve bitirdim kitabı, durum bu. İleride belki tekrar denerim ama emin değilim.

[Burak Uzun · Rating 4 out of 5]

20'li yaşlarında Zanzibar'dan eğitim için İngiltere'ye göçen, orada sevip evlenip çocuk sahibi olan Afrikalı bir İngilizce öğretmeninin 20 yıl sonra ailesini ziyarete gidişi etrafında işlenen bir aidiyet sıkıntısını konu ediyor roman.

En çok etkilendiğim, kitabın bir bölümünde Zanzibar'dan İngiltere'ye dönerken uçakta pasaportunu kaybediyor adam. O an, aslında bir ingiliz pasaportu olmasına rağmen bunu ispat edememe ve geri dönme ihtimalinde siyasi çekişmeler yaşanan memleketine kabul edilmeme korkusu eşsiz bir “yersiz yurtsuz"luk örneği veriyor.

Murat Belge'nin önsözü de yazarı, karakteri, yaşananları ve coğrafyayı tahayyül edebilmenize hayli yardımcı oluyor.

Hasılı, Gurnah'ı okuduğum ilk romanıyla beğendim.

[Ebru Çökmez · Rating 4 out of 5]

2021 Nobel Edebiyat Ödüllü yazarın Deniz Kenarında ve Son Hediye kitaplarını okumuştum. Gurnah’ın teması değişmiyor. Göçmenlik, kimlik, aidiyet sorunları, sömürgecilik…

Gurnah’ın romanlarına yansıyan, çoğunlukla kendi tanıklığına dayalı hikâyelerini ve anlatım biçimini sevdim. Özellikle bu romanda anlatıcının Emma’ya anlattığı, Zanzibar’da bıraktığı ailesine ilişkin uyduruk olayları ve kahramanları, Emma’nın babasıyla yaptığı sohbetlerde nabza göre şerbet verişini ve Gurnah’ın bunları kurarken hem kendi kökenleriyle hem de İngiliz efendilerle dalga geçişini sevdim. Hem İngiltere’de hem de Zanzibar’da öteki olmak, İngilizlerle, Zanzibarlılarla, politikacılarla ve genel olarak her iki ülkenin toplumsal yapısı ile ilgili tespitler yaparken kullandığı cümleler o kadar güzel ki, çeviride kaybolmamış olmalarına inanamadım. Son Hediye’deki asıl kahraman Abbas’ın Sessizliğe Hayranlık’taki anlatıcının esas babası olduğunu öğrenmem ise daha bir hoşuma gitti.

Bundan sonrası SPOILER içerir. Dönüp baktığımda hatırlamak için özetliyorum:

Zanzibar’dan İngiltere’ye eğitimine devam etmek için kaçak yollarla gelen bir anlatıcımız var. İlk bölümde 20 yıl boyunca İngiltere’de yaşadığını öğreniyoruz. Üniversite okurken bir yandan bulaşıkçılık yapıyor. Bu işyerinde kendisi gibi öğrenci olan Emma ile birbirlerine âşık oluyorlar.  Asla evlenmeseler de birlikte yaşıyorlar ve bir kızları oluyor. Bu süreçte Emma’nın ailesi, öğretmenlik yaptığı okuldaki durumu ve kızıyla ilişkisine dair anlattıklarını okuyoruz. Ayrıca anlatıcı Zanzibar’da geride bıraktığı ailesi ve oradaki yaşam ile ilgili Emma’ya ve onun ailesine sürekli uydurma hikâyeler anlatıyor. Üvey babası Haşim’i, dayısı olarak anlatıyor vs…

Kitabın ikinci bölümünde ülkesine giriş yasağı kaldırılan anlatıcımız memleketine kısa bir ziyaret yapıyor. Tümü Müslüman olan ailesinin viraneye dönmüş evinde üç hafta geçiriyor. Ayrı kaldıkları dönemde mektuplaşmışlar ama onlara ne Emma’dan ne de kızından bahsetmiş. Ailesi onu Müslüman bir kızla evlendirmek istiyor.  Anlatıcı biraz da bu evlilikten sıyrılmak için İngiltere’deki yaşamının gerçeklerinden bahsetmek zorunda kalıyor ve ailesiyle arasındaki ince bağı da böylelikle koparıyor.

Kahramanımız kendisi ile İngiltere’deki yaşamı arasındaki tek bağın Emma olduğunu Zanzibar’dayken anlıyor ve onu çok özlüyor. Ancak dönüşte terk edileceğini de biliyor

[merixien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abdulrazak Gurnah 1960’larda öğrenci olarak İngiltere’ye gider. Tabii bu normal bir yurtdışı eğitim planından ziyade, 1964 devrimi ve Abeid Amani Karume’nin iktidara gelişi sonrasında bir Zanzibar’dan kaçış yoludur. Bu durumu yani göçmenliği - özellikle de sömürgeden gelen göçmen bir Afrikalı olma halini- neredeyse bütün kitaplarına bir şekilde entegre ediyor. Bu durumla ilgili Coetzee’nin Taşra Hayatından Manzaralar’da insanlarla iletişim kurmada yaşadığı sıkıntıyı, yalnızlığını ve sessizliğini “göçmenliğin üzerine sinmesi” ile açıklamasını sık sık hatırladım bu kitabı okurken. Tabii Gurnah’ın tıpkı kendi hayatında da kendisinin mülteci olarak görmediği ülkeye bir sığınmacı olarak gelmediğini, aksine ülkesinde yaşanan vahşetin kendini dehşete düşürüp utandırdığı için bu konuda kimseyle konuşamadığını bu yüzden de bir sığınmacı yerine öğrenci olarak belirttiği gibi bu yarattığı karaktere de yansıyor. Tıpkı Aldulrazak Gurnah gibi isimsiz karakterimiz geçmişle yüzleşmek, ülkesini hatırlamak yerine sessizliğe sığınarak atlatıyor. Üç bölüme ayırdığı hikayesinin her aşamasında yeni bir ailenin oluşturulmasıyla karşılaşıyorsunuz ve hangi olayların kimlerle ilişkili olduğunu ancak kitabın sonuna vardığınızda anlayabiliyorsunuz. Kendisine ve kısmen ülkesine dair yeni tarihler yazıyor ve Zanzibar ile İngiltere hayatını birbirinden tamamen ayırıyor.

Bu ayrım bir noktada sadece geçmişi ve bugünü ayırmak için yaptığı bir şey mi yoksa göçmenlik uzadıkça insanda kaybolan aidiyet duygusunun yarattığı bölünme mi diye merak ediyorum. Zira her iki kültürü de çok iyi bilmesini ve buna rağmen bu iki kültüre de yabancılığı o kadar basit bir dil ile aktarıyor ki karakterde hem Gurnah’ın kendi iç dünyasının çok net bir yansımasını görüyorsunuz hem de kendinizden izler keşfediyorsunuz.

Özetle Abdulrazak Gurnah bana yeniden Afrika anlatılarını sevdiren, yalın dil kullanımıyla dünyaları anlatmasıyla okumaktan keyif aldığım yazarlardan birisi oldu. Eğer siz de benim gibi çok sesli - içinde kendisiyle tartışan- söyleyemediklerini hep iç sesiyle dillendiren kitapları seviyorsanız Sessizliğe Hayranlık’ı mutlaka okuyun.

[Hulyacln · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Ama orası evim değildi artık..’
.
İnsana sorulabilecek en zor sorulardan değil midir ‘Evin neresi?’. Konumun-bulunduğu yerin sorulmadığını çok iyi bilirsiniz ama ‘şurası- şu kişi/şey’ diyemezsiniz kolay kolay.
O sorudaki ev, ‘yuva’dır aslında.
Rahat ve güvende hissettiğiniz bir kovuk gibi.
.
Kumdan Yürek ile tanıştığım Abdulrazak Gurnah, ‘Sessizliğe Hayranlık’ta da beni etkiledi. Bu kitabı sevmemdeki- bir çırpıda okumamdaki en büyük etken ise ‘insanın güçsüzlüğünün olağanlığı’ sanırım. Her geçen gün daha da bulanıklaşan suya benzer bir ülke, akla hayale sığmayan zulümler, inancın körleştirici tadına aldananlar, nereye giderse gitsin/ nerede kalırsa kalsın huzursuzluğunu etinden ayıramayanlar...
Kısaca sakin ama vurucu bir kitap ‘Sessizliğe Hayranlık’
(Özellikle son bölümüyle kalbimi birkaç yerinden kırdığını söylemeliyim)
.
Müge Günay çevirisi, Emmanuel Ekong Ekefrey kapak resmiyle (Koloniler-2012) ~

[Ferhat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Çiçeği burnunda nobelli gurnah'tan okuduğum ilk roman oldu.Bir basyapıt degil belki ama bittiğinde inceden derin bir hüzün ve sızı bırakıyor,sessiz ama çok güçlü. sömürge insanı olmak, yersiz yurtsuzluk, yabancılaşma vs. çok acı ontolojik kırılmalar...

[Erkan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yazardan Nobel aldıktan sonra kısa süre içerisinde okuduğum ikinci roman. Romanlarını benzer eksende yazdığını bildiğimden dolayı acaba tekrara düşmüş müdür, sıkılır mıyım endişesi vardı ama öyle olmadı, büyük bir ilgiyle okudum bu romanı da.

Yazar Zanzibar'dan uzun yıllar önce İngiltere'ye göçen biri. Dolayısıyla romanlarında aidiyet ve göçmenlik sorunlarını ele alıyor, arka planda da Zanzibar'la bağlantı kuruyor ve adanın yaklaşık son elli yıllık siyasi ve sosyal yaşamından izler bulunuyor. Bu romanda da benzer bir durum vardı ancak anlatım tarzı ve üslubu birbirine benzer olsa da gösterdiği ustalıkla ve tabii farklı konular ve kurguyla yazar kendini okutmayı beceriyor. Nobel sonrası okumaya başladığım bir kalem oldu tıpkı Ishiguro gibi ve bu ödülü almasından memnun oldum yoksa ıskalayacağım bir yazar olma ihtimali yüksekti zira Nobeli almadan önce kitabını elimde evirip çevirmiş ve rafa geri bırakmıştım :)

[Elcin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kısa zamanda okuduğum ikinci Gurnah kitabı. Başladığımda, yazarın ilk okuduğum kitabı Deniz Kenarında ile ne kadar benzer cümle akışları var, acaba bu yüzden sıkılacak mıyım diye düşündüm, ancak öyle olmadı. Çok derin anlatılara ve sorgulamalara girmeden aidiyet duygusunu güzelce anlatmış. Ne geldiğin ne de gittiğin yere ait olamama duygusuna sıkışmışlık aslında kitapta anlatılan sessizliğin ta kendisi.

Dönüşeceğim öbür insanı bulmak için kendim olarak bildiğim insanı öldürmem gerekecek.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

A young man grows up with his mother on the island of Zanzibar, without knowing his father.

Some years later he is given a chance to study in England, by a family friend who is a strict disciplinarian, ensuring he succeeds in his studies. He discovers how much more difficult life can be when he becomes independent and no longer has the encouragement of his fellow countryman to push him.

By chance, he meets an English woman, Emma and is surprised by her interest in him. They become a couple and a have a child together, a teenager whom he barely is able to relate to. Due to Emma's rebelliousness against her middle class, conventional parents, she refuses to marry.

Our protagonist observes everything with a mild sense of detachment, he is curious but not judgmental. He often thinks of the things he could have said, should have said, but didn't. His silence(s) will have consequences.

Due to the political situation in Zanzibar, it is 20 years before he returns. He has not told his family about his personal life in England. His relationship with Emma is increasingly difficult, as they fall into patterns they seem not to be able to extract themselves from.

When he returns, he finds that little has changed. His family set about doing what they have always done. Though he knows he probably won't go along with anything they are arranging for him, he allows situations to progress further than they should, given his circumstance. It will require him to be more present and to do more than just observe what is happening around him, he must take action, before things get out of control.

Brilliantly told, observed and felt. Gurnah's portrayal of the unnamed narrator is insightful, and realistic, capturing what it might feel like to be trapped between two cultures, with a foot in each camp, now neither quite belonging to either, seeing through them both, existing in a kind of no man's land, a threshold that some occupy, but rarely in the exact same circumstance.

It is a recognition of a kind of heightened awareness, the consequence of which is a loss, an understanding whose price is to live in the 'in-between', to make one continually ponder who they really are.

[Sorin Hadârcă · Rating 4 out of 5]

An alternative portrayal of the immigrant. Not the entrepreneurial, smart person who takes destiny upon himself or herself, but one that has been betrayed by his or her own country, shuts up on the world and carries on failure by not talking about pain. A victim really, not a survivor.

It rung true, but the I didn't sense the conflict as liberating. Lots of sarcasm, self-pity and self-deception. A resolution is to break up the silence but there is fear, so much fear of ending up worse. The original sin of having left something behind, unfixed and broken, casts a long shadow. Anyway, good literature.

[Julia Nemy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written by the latest winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah! @Grace Pettey chose this book for our Fulbright book club. So glad you picked it, Grace!

“Admiring Silence” follows a man originally from Zanzibar and his life in England, mixed with his former life in Tanzania, and his return to Zanzibar after 20+ years. My favorite scenes are the ones with his English in-laws, where he cleverly highlights the parent’s racial prejudice toward him, in an almost comical way.

I was not expecting the ending, but I loved it, in a tragic hyper realistic way. Wow.

Most stories have a moral, but I am not sure what the moral of this one is. I think I like that.

Mostly, I loved Gurnah’s vocabulary and his language, and found myself thinking multiple times I should write down some words to improve my own vocabulary. I hope to read more of Gurnah’s books soon.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well told story by an unnamed Zanzibari man living in a England after fleeing Zanzibar in the early 1960s. He has been the lover and partner of Emma, a white British woman. They have a teenage daughter. In England he completed high school, went to college and became a teacher. After a twenty year exile from his homeland, he finds out it is safe to return to Zanzibar. He travels by himself to Zanzibar.

An interesting novel about immigrants and exiles. A very worthwhile reading experience. This is my third Gurnah novel. All three novels, (the other two being ‘Reef’ and ‘Gravel Heart’) have been very well plotted with good character development. ‘Gravel Heart’ being my favourite of the three.

The author is a Tanzanian born British novelist and academic who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2021.

This book was first published in 1996.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ouch, my heart.

[Oleksandr Fediienko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Події роману подані з точки зору безіменного оповідача – мігранта із Занзібару, який уже багато років живе в Лондоні. Він звертається до лікаря, і той підтверджує його побоювання – це проблеми із серцем. Усе ж вік дає про себе знати. На огляді фахівець, яким би майстерним не був у своїй професійній діяльності, допускає висловлювання, які можна сприйняти як завуальовано расистські (він не відвертий расист, зате упередження стосовно раси проступають). Оповідач не може цього не помітити і це йому некомфортно. А втім, він свідомий, що його менш щасливі браття, які лишилися на “Чорному континенті”, ще в гіршому становищі – вони навіть і не мріють про доступ до сучасної медицини.
Оповідач мешкає зі своєю жінкою Еммою – англійкою – та їхньою дочкою. Емма вважає, що її батьки одержимі класом, сусідами та іноземцями. В їхній присутності чоловік почувається ніким, та і вони ставляться до нього так само. Він бачить, що теща мовчки засуджує вибір дочки. А от тесть, який колись був дотичний до торгівлі з країнами третього світу, ностальгує за імперським минулим Великої Британії (“… його очі, як зазвичай, засяяли в передчутті чергової імперської історії…”). Тому оповідач повсякчас змушений вигадувати байки про те, як на Занзібарі жилося значно краще до того, як британці кинули острів напризволяще. Сама Емма ніколи не ставилася до нього грубо, просто за обох визначила рівень близькості.
Оповідач дізнається, що новий уряд, який прийшов до влади в Танзанії, провів ряд реформ і оголосив амністію. Попри те, що чоловік виїхав із країни з власної волі, він відчуває з цього приводу провину. Зате тепер, міркує він, напевно буде безпечно повернутися – бодай для відвідин родини. Він думає: “Якщо це правда, я можу повернутися туди… коли захочу”. Та і, зважаючи на проблеми із серцем, це може бути для нього остання нагода побувати на батьківщині.
Головний герой летить на Занзібар і згадує своє минуле. Його мати не ходила до школи, бо в цьому не бачив сенсу її брат, який нею опікувався після смерті їхніх батьків. Учителями були здебільшого британці, інакше де ще їм було працювати? Його ж батько вважав, що з пазурів імперії не вирватися, попри наочні докази того, що деінде спротив чинився ледь не голими руками. А після здобуття незалежності виявилося, що різні народи країни живуть зовсім не мирно. Занзібар увійшов до складу Танзанії, і на острові для придушення протестних настроїв – реальних і потенційних – ввели комендантську годину, заборонили масові зібрання і виїзд із країни, скасували паспорти.
Тепер, з новим урядом, усе н��чебто має змінитися. Оповідача схиляють прийняти посаду перекладача тут, на острові. Проте це робиться лише для того, щоб іноземним інвесторам можна було показати, мовляв, ось до нас повертаються фахівці, у нас є перспективи, для досягнення успіху нам бракує лише вашого фінансування. Водночас місцева влада обмаль чого робить для справжнього покращення: “бракувало їжі, туалети стояли забиті, воду давали лише на дві години посеред ночі, а світла здебільшого не було”. У країні загалом і на острові зокрема процвітає корупція і панує меншовартість. Зміни лишаються на папері.
Оповідачу ніяково зізнатися родичам, що він живе з англійкою. Вони переконані, що він досі холостякує, що не личить у його віці, тому знаходять йому невістку на ім’я Сафія. Його вагання і нерішучість тільки заохочують сватання. Ненадовго він задумується, чи, може, справді прийняти цю пропозицію, тоді б він жив з тією, хто розділяє з ним культуру і розуміє його. Втім, життя з Еммою ототожнюється в нього з життям у теперішній домівці – Англії. Все ж насмілившись розповісти родичам про Емму, він залишає родину з ганьбою. А Емма, тим часом, повідомляє, що знайшла собі іншого…
Оповідач більше не бачить сенсу жити в Англії. І Занзібар теж уже не відчувається домом. Хибні спогади, які він сам собі вимислив, змусили його ностальгувати за юністю, прожитою в імперії. Він “почувався біженцем із власного життя”, він переписав власну історію, “щоб виправити власне бачення себе”, чим позбавив себе минулого і так само примарним стало його майбутнє.

[Esther · Rating 5 out of 5]

Læst efter og købt til en samtale mellem Anne Green Munk og Abdulrazak Gurnah til LitX i Aarhus, i anledning af nylig oversættelse til dansk fra 'Admiring silence' (1996).

Abdulrazak Gurnah skriver på engelsk, men kommer originalt fra Zanzibar. Man kan uden at tvivle eller tøve kalde dette for postkolonial litteratur. Bogen nægter faktisk at beskæftige sig med andet end dette. Det gennemsyrer alle dele af den unavngivne hovedkarakters liv, i starten et faktum der for mig medførte en smule irritation, af en eller anden grund. Han må jo tænke på andre ting undervejs også? Men det gør han ikke rigtig, og efterhånden som man læser, forstår man at det også må være sådan det føles. Altopslugende, at komme til England og skulle føle sig heldig mens man bliver trådt på. Ikke at høre til i nogle af de lande man kunne kalde for sit hjem.

Bogen hedder Tavshedens Ø på dansk, og jeg kan egentlig bedre lide den engelske titel 'Admiring silence', men kan også godt forstå oversættelsesproblematikken. Bogen handler for mig om, at det usagte og småløgnen er et våben, en måde at tage kontrol og at tavshed dermed også er et skjold. Jeg synes denne bog er virkelig dyb, og det er det der står tilbage for mig, men hvor var den også humoristisk skrevet til tider. God sommerferiebog, hvis jeg skulle sige det!!

"Jeg vil gerne stoppe her, men der er endnu et par småting, som må fortælles. Dette er ikke et eventyr, eller en bekendelse eller et dokument, der lover frelse, forløsning eller sublimering, og jeg står gladelig ved, at det, jeg tror, at jeg forstår, bliver tvivlsomt så snart jeg sætter ord på det. Sådan er det med ord. De er prægnanate, snedige, glatte. De bliver aldrig mindre, hvor mange gange man så end læser dem på deres rituelle rejse ind i erindringen."

[DilekO · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kitabı okumayı düşünenlere tavsiyem önsözü kitabı bitirdikten sonra okumaları ; böylece sonunu baştan öğrenmemiş olurlar .

[Amanda Lichtenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a heart-breaking story with incredibly moving passages. Unfortunately, the character's winding narrative distracted me at times from the essential heartbreak of it all, taking me a month to finish the book! Gurnah's prose is fierce and devastating overall, and his searing, scathing take on post-revolution Zanzibar/Stone Town, fascinating -- it's still very much the filthy, polluted, water-plagued city described in the early days of post-revolutionary Zanzibar, still the same corruption and insider-outsider anxiety as there ever was. Highly recommend this book, especially to those who know this part of the world. It's a rare insight into intimate affairs so often kept secret, shamed, hidden, or downplayed as par for the Swahili course. Seriously fascinating and complicated take on love, relationship, nationality, exile, and belonging.

[Gregory Duke · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much better than Paradise that it surprises me that this was published only two years after it. Wild. A really great refugee narrative that is able to be super funny (Gurnah consistently has some really great punchlines, which I didn't expect) and emotive (particularly the ending). The narrator tells fantasies about his history to his English partner and her family in order to prevent sharing his honest past, and he doesn't communicate with his family back in Zanzibar, so there is a double silence at play that, throughout the novel, begins to crumble until he has to speak the truth. But what is the truth of an individual between two countries, especially when his "homeland" has been colonized by his current "home?" The silences and false narratives are just as true to his self-perception as the actual spoken realities behind him.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely pleased to have discovered this author. Beautiful precise language, sly wit, topics that interest me. I'll be reading more.

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The narrator - unnamed - comes from Zanzibar, which he fled in the early 1960s, making his way to England. He has an acidic voice, this teacher, who is married to an Englishwoman, with whom he has daughter, surrounded as he has been since arriving by racial hatred. A man caught between two cultures, each seeing him no longer belonging, a man who has kept a strict divide between his former and present lives. It is fascinating and relentless, and often funny.

[Utsob Roy · Rating 5 out of 5]

আবদুলরাজাক-কে আমি চিনতাম না, চিনবার কথাও না। বস্তুত, প্রত্যেকবার নোবেল পুরষ্কারের পর আমি নতুন একজন সাহিত্যিকের সাথে পরিচিত হই।

রাজাকের নোবেলপ্রাপ্তির কারণটা এই:

...for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.

রাজাকের উপন্যাসের কথা বলতে গিয়ে ব্যক্তি রাজাক-কে নিয়ে এত টানাটানির কারণ হচ্ছে এই উপন্যাসটি (এবং তার আরো বেশকিছু কাজ) প্রচণ্ড ব্যক্তিগত। ব্যক্তিগত ট্রমা, ব্যক্তিগত হতাশা।

প্রথমেই যে বিষয়টা খোলাসা করা উচিত তা হচ্ছে রাজাক-কে এন্টি-কলোনিজমের ধ্বজাধারী ভাবা অনুচিত হবে। রাজাক নিজের ছাড়া আর কারো ধ্বজা ধরেননি। কলোনিয়ালিজম এখানে ব্যাকগ্রাউন্ড, খুব ইনটিমেট এবং প্রাসঙ্গিক ব্যাকগ্রাউন্ড, গল্পটা পার্সনাল।

রাজাক জাঞ্জিবারের মানুষ। জাঞ্জিবার ছিল ব্রিটিশ কলোনি। কলোনি উঠে যাওয়ার পর বিদেশি শাসকের জায়গায় দেশি শাসকের শোষণ দেখতে হয়েছে। অর্থাৎ, পুরো দায়টা ঠিক কলোনিয়াল মাস্টারদের না। ফলতঃ রাজাক, কী কলোনিয়াল মাস্টার, কী দেশি লুটেরা, কারুর প্রতিই তার ডিসটেস্ট প্রকাশে পিছপা হননি।

এখন আসি লেখার বিষয়ে। রাজাকের লেখার স্টাইলে প্রথমে যে শব্দটা মাথায় আসে তা হচ্ছে 'পেনেট্রেটিং'। যদি কলোনিয়ালিজমের কথা বলি, রাজাক রঅ, প্রপাগান্ডা, বা পার্টি লাইন মার্কা ইন্টারপ্রেটেশানে না গিয়ে কলোনিয়ালিজম কীভাবে ইনডিভিজুয়ালের জীবনকে প্রভাবিত করে (কলোনাইজার ও কলোনাইজড উভয়েরই) সেই দিকে নজর দিয়েছেন।

তারপরেই চোখে পড়ে ছোট ছোট উইটি বাক্যের বদলে স্লো-বিল্ডআপের সারকাজম। প্রথম স্টাইলটা হরহামেশাই দেখা যায়।

তার এনভায়রনমেন্টের যে ক্রস-কালচারাল মেশ্ সেটা বেশ সুস্বাদু বলা যায়। ওহাবি, ইংলিশ, এবং পৃথিবীর ম্যাপের প্রায় অর্ধেকজুড়ে ছোটখাটো রেফারেন্স মিলে বলা যায় কসমোপলিটান উপন্যাস।

প্লট ভালো লেগেছে তাই ক্যোট করা থেকে বিরত থাকলাম। নিজে পড়াই বরং ভালো।

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

And then the unexpected conclusion. Ok, maybe other readers won’t be as surprised as I was, but I had grown to like this narrator and wanted things to somehow resolve for him. He is enmeshed in the expectations of societies which compete for his acquiescence and his way of managing these has been to suppress them, to play along with the expectations of others rather than confront them. He has believed that even a mild clarification is pointless, but what he has failed to recognise is the impact on his own identity. While Zanzibar was dangerous for people like him, his exile made it possible for him to deny kinship ties. He could justify suppressing aspects of his English life in letters home because it would shame his family: his illiterate mother would not understand and would be embarrassed at having his revelations read aloud to her by a paid reader. But when in the brief moment of political sunshine in Zanzibar Emma pressures him to visit his family, the stage is set for a clash between his love for her and the demands of kinship.

The narrator seems philosophical about the way things turn out but I’m bothered about him. He has, after all he has been through, no home. I am also fascinated by how the author has wrought this response from me, and puzzled about why there is no comparable Australian novel. Surely there should be?

To read the rest of this review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2014/04/25/ad...