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Ron Charles's Reviews > Theft
Theft
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In his acceptance speech for the 2021 Nobel Prize in literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah extolled storytelling that sees what “the hard domineering eye cannot see, what makes people, apparently small in stature, feel assured in themselves regardless of the disdain of others.� Such writing, the Zanzibari novelist said, requires a way of looking that “makes room for frailty and weakness, for tenderness amid cruelty, and for a capacity for kindness in unlooked-for sources.�
“Theft,� the first novel Gurnah has published since winning the Nobel, offers an example of such compassionate, revelatory seeing. Even the structure of this story works against the hierarchical nature of plot � that common sense that this character is central and those merely peripheral. There’s something almost disorienting about Gurnah’s narrative as he moves from one person to the next, willfully thwarting our desire to settle on a protagonist.
Oh, he’ll get there eventually, but he’s not to be rushed as he examines the lives of an expanding family of characters in Tanzania in the late 20th century.
“Theft� is a quieter, more delicate novel than Gurnah’s “Afterlives,� which The Washington Post named one of the top 10 books of 2022. That novel contends directly with the injuries of European colonialism; in “Theft� the wounds have healed over, but the telling limp remains. Here, Gurnah is interested in the ways that abuse is stored in the body, where it either calcifies into malice or metabolizes into compassion.
The story begins with Raya, a beautiful teenage girl married off to a contractor in his 40s who forces himself on her every night. “He was charming with other people,� Gurnah writes, “but he reserved his cruelty for her and took pleasure in it, and she feared that one day his viciousness would become violent.� When their son, Karim, is 3, Raya says enough and moves back to her parents� house. Gossips be damned, she must protect her son. And yet, soon Raya discovers. . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
“Theft,� the first novel Gurnah has published since winning the Nobel, offers an example of such compassionate, revelatory seeing. Even the structure of this story works against the hierarchical nature of plot � that common sense that this character is central and those merely peripheral. There’s something almost disorienting about Gurnah’s narrative as he moves from one person to the next, willfully thwarting our desire to settle on a protagonist.
Oh, he’ll get there eventually, but he’s not to be rushed as he examines the lives of an expanding family of characters in Tanzania in the late 20th century.
“Theft� is a quieter, more delicate novel than Gurnah’s “Afterlives,� which The Washington Post named one of the top 10 books of 2022. That novel contends directly with the injuries of European colonialism; in “Theft� the wounds have healed over, but the telling limp remains. Here, Gurnah is interested in the ways that abuse is stored in the body, where it either calcifies into malice or metabolizes into compassion.
The story begins with Raya, a beautiful teenage girl married off to a contractor in his 40s who forces himself on her every night. “He was charming with other people,� Gurnah writes, “but he reserved his cruelty for her and took pleasure in it, and she feared that one day his viciousness would become violent.� When their son, Karim, is 3, Raya says enough and moves back to her parents� house. Gossips be damned, she must protect her son. And yet, soon Raya discovers. . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
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Reading Progress
February 23, 2025
–
Started Reading
February 23, 2025
– Shelved
March 16, 2025
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Finished Reading
