Theft

Abdulrazak Gurnah, who fled Zanzibar for the UK in the late 1960s, had published 10 novels before being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021 for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism”. Theft, a family drama, is his first book since. Set between Zanzibar and Dar Es Salaam in the 1990s, as decades of oppressive authoritarian rule are giving way to a burgeoning tourism industry, the novel follows the lives of three young people coming of age. Badar is the novel’s unlikely hero, a houseboy taken in by handsome Karim and his brainy wife Fauzia. Their marriage breaks down after they have a baby and a “glowing beauty” white relief worker takes an interest in Karim. There are many discreet little plot twists along the way, and it is in the final 50 pages that the story reaches its engrossing crescendo.