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.