THEFT: REVIEW

 

(The story may be a simple one, but “Theft” is the kind of book that creates a reality that will stick in the mind of the reader for a long time. - Review by Margaret von Klemperer)

 

Abdulrazak Gurnah’s writing is brilliant, perhaps unsurprising for a Nobel Literature Prize winner.

At first glance it seems unshowy, beautifully easy to read and straightforward. But at the same time, it has immense power to hook the reader in and make them care deeply about the characters and their circumstances.

 Theft has three main characters whose lives we follow as they move from their 1990s childhood into adulthood. They are based in the author’s native country of Tanzania, specifically Zanzibar, which Gurnah left at the age of 18 as a refugee before settling in Britain.

The first is Karim, who, although his mother abandoned him when he was a child, was fortunate to have a supportive half-brother who saw that he wanted for very little.

In contrast, Badar has no idea who his real parents were. The presumed relations who raised him until he was aged 14 then unceremoniously dumped him onto another family in Dar es Salaam to be a servant.

The third character, Fauzia, is an only child, clever and deeply loved, but with an overprotective mother who is always terrified that her daughter’s childhood epilepsy will recur and ruin her life. In the early part of the book, we learn less about Fauzia, but her role will develop.

The family who employ Badar are in fact Karim’s mother, her second husband and his gloomy father. Once Karim is a successful, high-flying and somewhat entitled student in Dar es Salaam, he visits them to re-establish a relationship with his mother and, in what is perhaps a slightly patronising way, befriends Badar. And when Badar is wrongly accused of theft, he takes him back to Zanzibar and helps him to find a job, working in a slightly run-down hotel in Stone Town.

Karim is a charming and successful young man whose easy generosity to Badar sets up an unequal relationship, which when tested, may prove difficult. But at the beginning, it is happy, and when Karim marries Fauzia, it seems that Badar has the friendships and stability he has always craved.

But life is not that simple and in this story of three young people – ordinary in many ways and none of them likely to change the world – Gurnah explores how relationships work. It is not just the interpersonal that he highlights: Tanzania attracts aid workers, and Gurnah shows how the volunteers, however good their original motives, can be predatory and frighteningly careless of the societies they find themselves in. And on the personal level, he shows how people interact – who has power, influence, affection, empathy and need and how these compete.

The story may be a simple one, but Theft is the kind of book that creates a reality that will stick in the mind of the reader for a long time. - Margaret von Klemperer

Theft is published by Bloomsbury: ISBN 978-1-5266-8010-5