A review by dani7silver
Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah

5.0

In my goal to read more books from African writers in 2022, I am very happy I picked up this book from Abdulrazak Gurnah, Tanzanian author and winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature. This book was a great introduction to the author's work, and I felt as though the style throughout truly mirrored the experience of alienation both internally, from within the home, and externally, as an immigrant in a foreign country. The pace of the book felt unrushed, despite being a rather short book. Additionally this book covers around a decade in the protagonist's life, but walks the line between life unfolding slowly and happening all at once. I thought that there was a great juxtaposition with how slow and relatively unsuccessful the protagonist's progress in the U.K. was compared to the letters he received from home from his mother, specifically the constant notice of the increasing age of his younger half-sister. It makes one feel as though time really is passing in different and mysterious ways, and almost acts as a reversed metaphor for the perhaps perception of "backwardness" of his country of origin and its actual conception in his country of immigration. I loved the prose, and I felt as though this story was a truly realistic story of not only immigration, but the place all individuals have between different spheres in life, and how we are unable to balance or control these all at once. One relates to the protagonist in the sense that we are always making these missed connections in life, either too late to see a family member for the last time, not appreciating a moment as it unfolds in front of us, regretful of connections of love that either could not or never did manifest, and feeling pressure under the slowness, weight, and unpredictability of the future. The future and the progression of life in general as presented in this story is a realistic entity; it is one which unfolds the way it should, not in accomplishments but in days, and perhaps never does so in the way we anticipated it. It is a life which makes us wonder if things were different and if only we had more time.