MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah was just starting a new book when he got a call in 2021. He had won the Nobel Prize in literature, which was great and all, but the attention meant he had to take a break from writing that book.
ABDULRAZAK GURNAH: I couldn't go back to it. I don't like to work under that kind of pressure.
KELLY: He eventually returned to those unfinished pages and found there was still a story there that needed to be written. The book is out now. It's called "Theft," and he spoke about it with Andrew Limbong, host of NPR's Book Of The Day podcast.
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ANDREW LIMBONG: It's the '90s, and Tanzania is open for business. The government recently dropped foreign exchange restrictions, and so tourists are flocking to Zanzibar. It's islands just off the coast of East Africa. Here's Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was born on the island.
GURNAH: And suddenly, tourism just became big money - all kinds of new hotels, new people, NGOs.
LIMBONG: Of course, tourists usually come with some baggage. Gurnah said some beaches and restaurants became exclusively for tourists - no locals allowed. But the tourism boom also changed the story those locals were telling about their own home.
GURNAH: I mean, there are many corruptions. People begin to tell stories that are not true. You know, you see these guides going around saying, this is this; this is that. Freddie Mercury lived there. These are all lies, you know? They just make things up just to please them. You do whatever these people want to hear.
LIMBONG: This transition time, when allegiances and power balances are all shifting, is when and where Gurnah's new book, "Theft," takes place. It centers three characters. There's the educated and kind of arrogant Karim, his young wife, Fauzia, who suffers from epilepsy, and Badar, a young servant who Karim and Fauzia treat almost like a younger sibling. They all come from different worlds, and yet, all three of them have something in common. Rightfully or wrongfully, they all feel unwanted by their parents in some way.
You know, why was it important to you to, like, have these characters feel a sense of, like, rejection so early on?
GURNAH: I suspect a lot of children feel that at some stage. Now, it could be this is an adolescent thing, that as you grow older, you realize when you start having your own children that it isn't true. But in some cases, of course, it's also true that they're not wanted, like in the case of Badar. Nobody wants him.
LIMBONG: And people say this to Badar repeatedly. Early on in the book, the woman who takes Badar in as a boy tells him the story of how his mom died when he was a baby and how his father up and left. Gurnah writes, quote, "he cried every time she told it. He felt so dirty. She tutted at him when he cried and wiped his tears with her fingers, but then later, she would tell him again. We did the best we could for you and God will reward us." And so it's a big blow when Badar, finally finding some footing, some stability in his life, is falsely accused of stealing.
GURNAH: I'm so very interested in how people who are powerless save themselves - how it is that they somehow hang on and find a way out.
LIMBONG: Gurnah's last book, "Afterlives," was a grand, multigenerational statement-making novel about colonialism and violence and war - the kind of novel you'd expect from an author with the biggest literary prize to his name. In comparison, the story he tells in "Theft" is smaller, or maybe intimate is the better word.
GURNAH: And I wanted to get it right in the end precisely because I didn't want it to be something that would be to say hey, here comes Mr. Nobel.
LIMBONG: The high drama moments in "Theft" happen in plain settings, like quiet living rooms or at the front desk of the hotel where Badar ends up working.
GURNAH: I like that. I mean, I like the fact that these are not heroic lives, but they're also not heroic obstacles. They're regular, everyday, ordinary sort of things.
LIMBONG: "Theft" is a story about people getting jobs, helping a buddy find a place to stay and figuring out their place in the world. Not to disagree with Mr. Nobel, but the way Gurnah writes it, it all comes off as pretty heroic to me. Andrew Limbong, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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