At this in-person event (with a virtual attendance option), masks and proof of vaccination are required. Please review our health and safety protocols here.

In Afterlives, the tenth novel from the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah delivers a sweeping, multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of East Africa and illuminating a legacy of dislocation that is still with us today.

After fleeing his native Zanzibar for the United Kingdom at age 18, Gurnah turned to writing in English as a way to make sense of the hardships of a refugee’s existence. With a gift for transforming the experience of displacement into gripping fiction, Gurnah brings intimacy and humanity to the realities of colonialism. Afterlives follows a trio of young people living, working, and falling in love, their fates knotted ever more tightly together against the backdrop of the German colonial rule of 20th-century East Africa. Spanning decades and continents, Afterlives transcends national and historical boundaries in a profoundly beautiful, strikingly resonant tale that will linger with you long beyond the last page.

Gurnah will be in conversation with Tope Folarin, the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Studies, the Lannan Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Georgetown University, and the author of the novel A Particular Kind of Black Man.

Thanks to our promotional partner, HIAS.