Finished: AfterLives (Gurnah) A very well written book about a subject I know very little about....the colonization of parts of eastern Africa by the Germans in the late 1800's. The Germans brutally swept through the land, destroying villages and intimidating many of the men who lived in the villages to join their security forces. In AfterLives, two of the main characters join the German Schutztruppe, Ilyas and Hamza. Ilyas joins willingly after running away from home. He supports the Germans and comes to respect them. But, he is fighting against his own people. He is fighting against the tribes who try to rise up and revolt about the colonization. Hamza also joins voluntarily, but warily. He's got no other way to exist but to rely on the Germans to feed him and clothe him. The two don't know each other, but we read about their experiences in depth, while also reading about the history of the domination of the Germans in East Africa. The book is written by a Nobel Prize winner and was fascinating to me! Here is the description of the author:

"Gurnah was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents." 

That pretty much sums up the historical, eye-opening aspect to the book. Gurnah weaves his story around Ilyas, Hamza, Ilyas' best friend, Khalifa, and Ilyas' younger sister, Afiya. Before Ilyas leaves to join the Schutztruppe, he's been away with them for years, having run away from home at the age of eleven. He returns home, only to find that he has a sister who is ten years his junior, Afiya. She's only ten when he meets her, but he immediately takes her away from her abusive temporary family. He teaches her to read and write, and both she and Ilyas live with Khalifa, who is older than Ilyas, but has become one of his best friends. When Ilyas departs to rejoin the Germans in their battles, he enlists Khalifa to watch after Afiya. She grows up with Khalifa and his wife, Asha, and never stops wondering when Ilyas will return from the wars. We then turn to Hamza and the story of his experiences in the Schutztruppe. When the Germans are finally defeated by the British, who also want to colonize East Africa, but in a different way, Hamza returns home battered physically and emotionally, seeking out anyone who he may have known from his younger years. Finding no one, he ends up working under Khalifa at his warehouse job. Of course...when Hamza and Afiya meet, they fall in love. It's a slow process, but eventually they are married. Ilyas has still never returned home after several years, and Hamza does his best to find out any information he can for Afiya. Afiya eventually gives birth to a baby boy who they name, Ilyas. When young Ilyas grows up, he goes in search of the uncle he was named after and is finally successful in learning Ilyas' fate. The book ends rather abruptly there, which was a little unsettling, but on the whole, it was a very good book, letting us get to know and care for real people who were deeply affected by the colonization of their home country, first by Germany and then the British. 

 Finished: If We Were Villains (Rio) I really loved this one! Seven students at the small, but exclusive, Dellecher Classical Conservatory are deeply immersed in their Shakespearean curriculum...so much so that they even speak to each other using quotes from Shakespeare quite often in their every day conversations...and they make sense! Oliver, James, Meredith, Richard Wren, Alexander and Filippa are fourth year students, set to graduate at the end of the year. They all live together in one old, classical building, and are the only fourth year drama students. Last year they studied all the comedies, and this year they've finally made it to the tragedies. And, there IS real life drama and tragedy! As they wonder who will be cast in each role for their upcoming main stage production of Julius Caesar, Alexander bets the others that he can name the entire cast already based on how they have all been typecast in previous productions as the hero, the villain, the temptress, the tyrant, the ingenue and the "bit parts". Sure enough, Julius Caesar is cast exactly that way. Richard is pleased to be playing Caesar and never doubted for a moment that he would get the shining lead role. He's played most of the lead roles in the previous year's productions. He's a bit arrogant, and he and Meredith, the beauty, have been dating for over a year. Interestingly, each of the students pretty much has the attributes of the characters they are usually assigned. For instance, James is always cast as the hero, Oliver as the sidekick, Alexander as the villain, Meredith as the temptress, Wren as the ingenue, Filippa as the "go to" character, and Richard as the lead, which is quite often a tyrant. James and Oliver are roommates and the best of friends. Alexander is the one to go to for drugs. Meredith is the seductive, flirty beauty. Wren is the innocent, quiet girl, etc. All of the friends have their own faults...none are perfect, but they are extremely close and the best of friends. I really loved this aspect of the book. I loved that they could all predict how one of the others would feel in a given situation, and how they all rushed to stand beside any one of them who might be hurt or in trouble. When the fourth years are assigned their roles in the annual one night performance, where they perform selected scenes from a play, they are instructed to tell no one their roles! They are to just learn their lines and scenes and be prepared to perform the night of the event. This year's selected scenes will be from Hamlet. Upon receiving their assignments, Richard is clearly livid and has some sort of internal meltdown. When the night arrives, everyone is shocked that James is playing Hamlet and Oliver is playing Banquo. Everyone had assumed Richard would be Hamlet, but he has only a minor role. His behavior becomes more and more volatile, as he becomes verbally and physically abusive to all of them...going so far as to almost drown James after the Hamlet event. We continue to get to know each of the students, and their relationships to each other to the point of really caring for each of these kids. After Richard's behavior escalates even more at dress rehearsal and the first performance of Julius Caesar, a tragedy occurs and one of the students is dead. I won't spoil who it is. This event throws the remaining students into a tailspin as they wonder who could have done what was done. Their lives implode and we only hear the details of all these experiences ten years later as Oliver is released from prison and finally agrees to tell the now retiring detective, who has been on the case since the beginning, the entire truth of what really happened. I can't tell you how much I really loved this book, despite the tragedy. I'd love for there to be a sequel, but then it might just be best left alone with it's jaw-dropping epilogue. :-)