In The Last Gift, Zanzibar-born British writer Abdulrazak Gurnah takes on the themes of cultural identity and the weight of family secrets. This moving novel probes the meaning of the stories we tell to answer the fundamental questions of our lives.
Abbas and Maryam met in England; he was 34, she was 17. He was a sailor from an unidentified African country, she had been shuttled among foster parents and finally adopted by an Indian couple whose kindness masked latent abusiveness. Years later, Abbas has kept the story of his origins from Maryam and their children, Jamal and Hanna. "What I want from them is a story that has a beginning that is tolerable and open, and not one that is tripped with silences," says Hanna. "I want to be able to say 'This is who I am.' " Instead, they live with persistent feelings of apartness and shame.
When Abbas suffers a debilitating stroke and finally reveals the circumstances behind his exile from Zanzibar, it is neither so shaming as feared nor a climactic release. Instead, it is part of the process of living an unresolvable life. Gurnah seamlessly shifts the point of view among Abbas, Maryam, Hanna and Jamal; the transitions don't interrupt the narrative or jar the reader. His complex, memorable characters are utterly human. Everyone lives inside his or her own skin, and this occasionally profound novel reveals four lives inside and out. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer