“Post‐Revolution Crisis, Migration, and the Quest for Self‐Identity” in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Gravel Heart

Abstract

This paper examines post-revolution crises, migration, and the quest for self-identity in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Gravel Heart (2017). Gurnah is a postcolonial cosmopolitan Zanzibarian writer born and raised in Zanzibar, Tanzania, but who lives and writes in London. Gravel Heart reviews the 1964 post-independence revolution in Zanzibar with a focus on how it leads to the mass exodus of people of other ethnic backgrounds from Zanzibar. Among those forced to leave the island are the ruling Omani Arabs, the Yemenis, the Indians, and the Europeans. The paper adopts the Postcolonial theory in the analysis of the text with an emphasis on both remote and immediate causes of the revolution and the crises it generates. It is discovered that the 1964 revolution is an inevitable stage in the political development of Zanzibar going by the structure left behind by the British colonial government who fled the country in 1963. The text also reveals migration challenges faced by immigrants in the Diaspora, such as identity crises, unemployment, and accommodation problems. It can also be seen that the return of the leading migrant character serves as an epiphany for him regarding certain factors that culminated in the family and national crises. The narrator berates the revolution since the new emerging leaders failed to address the critical challenges faced by the people of Zanzibar; rather, they instituted a new government of terror. The post-revolution Zanzibar witnessed unjust arrest and detention of members of oppositions, corruption, high handedness, abuse of power and family disintegration. The paper thus concludes that forced migration, bad leadership, corruption, abuse of power, family disintegration, and crises of identity mar the post-revolution lives of Zanzibarians both at home and in the Diaspora.