Book cover of The Last Gift. Photo / Supplied
The Last Gift by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Bloomsbury $39.99
It's said that you are as sick as your secrets, and this layered and labyrinthine novel from multiple Booker shortlister Abdulrazak Gurnah supplies much evidence to that particular notion. Abbas, father of the idealistic Jamal and the hot-headed and anglicised (H)Anna, and husband to the apparently lifeless and lacklustre Maryam,
is - quite literally - struck down in the novel's second sentence.
While recovering from a diabetes-induced stroke, the poison of a long-held secret slowly seeps from his subconscious and leaks out of his gabbling mouth, threatening, in his view, anyway, to destroy his family. "I floated out [of his old life] on a raft made from the broken timbers of my cowardice," he intones. This event is the heart of the novel but, paradoxically, not its entire focus, more just the scaffolding that Gurnah uses to hang masses of other narrative and thematic material off.
He expertly sets up and explores the family dynamic of these deeply different individuals, then lets us into their lives. We see immigrant issues of a sense of self, of mistaken, misplaced or simply non-existent identity and straight-out racism dissected like a cadaver on the operating table in a kind of "no organ left unturned" fashion, firstly through foundling Maryam and stowaway Abbas' experiences of 1970s England through to the 9/11-inflicted children and their partners.
While Hanna (she drops the "H" in a symbolic, student-inspired act of defiance) can't bear the "ugly immigrant tragedies" as both Abbas and Maryam shed their secrets, Jamal is more patient, forthcoming and perhaps more understanding, likely because his PhD in the pattern of immigrant movements allows him a fascination with his own history; whereas modern Anna, with her arrogant, upper middle class English academic boyfriend, just sees hurt, hate and shame.
