I chose Desertion when I decided to read something by Nobel prizewinning author Abdulrazak Gurnah - the love story appealed to me, and the historical breadth of the timespan, with its intertwined family stories. All are terrific elements, but what will be longlasting in my memory is the deep understanding of journey-as-exile, of the experience of an immigrant whose world has changed so rapidly that he feels there is no concept of home to return to, no homecoming. "So the way that young people like Amin and Rashid thought of themselves and their future had not even begun to disentangle itself from the expectations of a colonised people, living in a small place, in the interregnum (although they did not know it) between the end of one age and the beginning of another" (187) - i.e., the end of European imperialism and the first stirrings of African independence. This is what Rashid experiences as a student in a foreign land in the 1960s:

"For the first time since arriving in England, I began to think of myself as an alien. I realised I had been thinking of myself as someone in the middle part of a journey, between coming and going, fulfilling an undertaking before returning home, but I began to fear that my journey was over, that I would live all my life in England, a stranger in the middle of nowhere" (275).

The irony is that the story from the past that Rashid tells, of the colonizer Pearce and his relationship with Rehana, is also that of a stranger in the middle of nowhere - literally, as the story begins, when Pearce is attacked and abandoned by his guides in 1899 in Mombasa and brought to the home of Rehana's brother. But Pearce has the privilege of a white colonizer in Africa during the span of Western imperialism: he has agency, he can go "home," to England, and, however well-meaning, leave a life behind in shambles. As Gurnah brought the intertwined stories together, I started to see the whole book as a metaphor for how the colonizer destroys the life of the colonized, a whole continent in this case.

The second story, that of Rashid and his siblings in Zanzibar, told from his perspective as well as his brother Amin's, was the best part of the book for me. I was instantly hooked on this family and their interactions: the way sister Farida felt stifled when she couldn't continue her education, Rashid's determination to continue his in England, the parents who had rebelled in their own youth but now were honored and respected in the community, and above all, Amin's story with Jamila, Rehana's granddaughter. Love of family permeates, but the title says it all - an exploration of who has deserted whom, who has deserted his or her roots and culture, and whether one can ever fully return from immersion in Western culture, where I thought Gurnah so perfectly stated that immigrants are taught "how to live with disregard" (266). You sense that this approach to life becomes too painful for Rashid, and he will attempt a return at the end, which gives the reader hope and brings the novel full circle.

There is so much I could say about this book: the beauty of the language, the fullness of his descriptive powers, the rich exploration of culture and history and character. If this (his seventh novel of ten) is any indication, there is so much more to absorb and learn from in his body of work.

I was pleased to receive an advance review copy from NetGalley and Riverhead Books in exchange for an honest review.

A novel in parts, set in colonial Africa, in Zanzibar, dealing with history, colonialism, family, cross-cultural love, and more. Richly textured and intriguing. Part One begins in 1899, when Hassalani, a shopkeeper rescues Martin Pearce from the desert, and Part Two jumps to the late 1950s and follows two brothers, Amin and Rashid, who live in Zanzibar. The novel's backdrop is European rule over Africa and its emergence from that rule, the independence of Zanzibar, and what ties these two decade-straddling periods together is the thinnest of threads between the cross-cultural love affair that occurs in 1899 between Hassalani's sister Rehana and Pearce, and the love affair in the late 1950s between Amin and Jamila who is the granddaughter of Rehana and Pearce. Some may find the novel disjointed, the leap from one time period to another, from one set of characters to an entirely new set, but I found it compelling.

Thanks to Riverhead Books and Netgalley for an ARC.

I just couldn't get into Desertion. And it moved at a snail's pace. I couldn't identify with the characters and the story line was lost on me. Maybe I'll try to read it again later, but I doubt it.