My name is Rajab Shaaban. It is not my real name, but one I borrowed. (...) It belonged to someone I knew many years ago

. Already from this sentence, which introduces one of the two protagonists, we can grasp several of the novel's hallmark traits: the lie, as both subterfuge and a relish for storytelling; destiny and absolution from sin, for Sha'ban is the eighth month of the year,

when the fortunes of the coming year are decided and the sins of the truly repentant are forgiven

; the flight from memory,

before it becomes so solid as to hold us in its grip and crowd out every other thought

. We also stand before a crossroads of civilizations and languages: Shaaban is in England and speaks English—the place and language of the colonizer; he hails from Zanzibar and East Africa, yet the entire narrative is steeped in Arab culture and wondrous, neighboring India. Shaaban has pretended not to know English; an interpreter is needed, and Latif, a young literature professor also hailing from Zanzibar, is called upon. As it happens, Latif’s father is also named Rajab Shaaban; is it a mere coincidence, or does someone else lurk behind this name, perhaps even Saleh Omar, who brought his family to ruin? The lengthy conversation between Shaaban and Latif, indicatively titled "Silence," is preceded by two preparatory sections. The first, "Flotsam," recounts Shaaban's arrival in England, the divestment of his culture of origin and of his past, like an old piece of furniture, the useless relic of a life that is no more and can never return. One must not be misled by the subtly ironic portrait of English society, nor by the reflections on British colonialism: the true themes are dislocation and remembrance. In the squalid room of the reception centre hangs a mirror,

too wide for that small, dark room, (...) in that oppressive light, my reflection looked like that of a creature suspended in an encroaching gloom, the circle of light slipping into shadow, hanging over my shoulders like a loose noose

. But the darkness was precious to him because it was full of "murmurs and whispers," whereas before, (the noises) had been so dreadfully obvious. (...) Moments slip through our fingers. Even as I tell them to myself, I can hear the echoes of what I am suppressing, of something I have forgotten to remember.

The second part is characterized right from its title by narrative realism: Latif is the name by which the young man is known in East Germany, where he went to study, fleeing his family's social and economic decline. Lucidly, almost detachedly, Latif recounts his family’s vicissitudes: the inept, naive father; the mother who uses her beauty to engage in scandalous love affairs; his affection for his older brother and the latter's descent into ruin up to his disappearance; and the figure of Hussein, a Mephistophelian character, manipulator, and rogue. It is a commercial society built on deals, trade, negotiations, ups and downs, where one must be shrewd and where reputation is paramount. A prosperous transit hub of trade between India and the Arab-Muslim world, Zanzibar is swept away and impoverished by oppressive, obtuse British rule; yet it endures, ever in search of new commerce and sources of wealth. It will not be the colonialists who destroy Latif's family, but familial rivalries, Hussein's deceit, and Saleh Omar’s lust for financial retribution—Saleh Omar being, in Latif's eyes, the true culprit. Yet, into this expansive social chronicle, something magical creeps in. In rationalist East Germany, in the cradle of Marxism-Leninism, Latif has been deceived: he believed he had an epistolary romance with a young German woman, only to discover that she is a fifty-year-old lady who concocted stories, eager to dream and recount something out of the ordinary. And here we come to the pivotal section of the novel. Latif visits Shaaban to understand what happened,

to complete those missing stories, (...) like a child or something like that, when your parents tell you what you did and said, and you have no memory of it." Yet, "some things are not worth knowing." And why does Shaaban agree to tell his tale? "I needed to be released. Not to be forgiven and cleansed of my sins. (...) I needed to be released from the burden of events and stories that I had been unable to tell, and that in telling I would fulfill the strong longing I felt to be heard and understood

. Shaaban is not interested in telling the truth; on the contrary, his narration of events transforms him from culprit into victim, destabilizing Latif. Shaaban needs to tell stories, like the narrators of

One Thousand and One Nights (see review on this site), like Herman Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener, "the unshakeable authority of that man's defeat, of the noble futility of his life

: in short, a fabricator of words. As in the Odyssey (see review on this site), the reader no longer wonders whether Ulysses is telling the truth or lying shamelessly: one surrenders to the spell of the narrative, to a fascinating, magical world of family quarrels, love and betrayal, lost affections and vendettas, until poor Latif loses all certainty about his own past; only in this way is it possible to begin a new life, to forget to remember.

It is a mistake to chase the plot, to make futile attempts to reconstruct the backstory, to bring order to the characters and their mutual ties. To appreciate the novel, one must allow oneself to be carried along by the fluidity of the prose, as when floating in a splendid, saline, deep sea, yielding to the currents, swimming only occasionally to regain one's bearings. As in Dino Campana's Canti Orfici, the narrative winds around itself again and again, abandons and resumes, views the same episode from different angles; only occasionally does it open a parenthesis on history and society, but that is not what matters; what the author is eager to explore are the charms and perils of remembrance, the necessity of abandoning memory—as a mere chronicle of what has been—to advance into the present. To this end, the lie is also useful. The novel's flaw is not confusion or fragmentation; it is that in the end it runs on so long as to become verbose and redundant.

The contamination of the English language can occur in many ways. Think of Nadine Gordimer, the great Achebe (see the review of

Things Fall Apart") and Chimamanda Adichie ("Half of a Yellow Sun

on this site), where indigenous tongues innervate the English language, which retains its composure while enriching itself with new lexicon; think of the talented NoViolet Bulawayo, who transitions effortlessly from Zimbabwean English to the slang of American teenagers (see

We Need New Names

), and finally the D'Annunzian Salman Rushdie, with his magnificent neologisms (see his masterpiece

Midnight's Children" also on this site). In Gurnah we encounter an elegant, clean style, which finds in the very fluidity of its storytelling the imprint of Arabic and East African languages.

Why read it? It is captivating to get swept up in, if a little too long.

By the sea (on the seashore)