last gift

"The Last Gift" is a work published in 2011 by Abdul Razak Gulna, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, and it is also a companion volume to his other novel "Praise of Silence". The story tells the story of the protagonist, Abbas, who abandoned his wife and son at the age of 19 because of inferiority complex and suspicion, fled his hometown Zanzibar, became a sailor, shuttled around the world's major ports, and lived a life of being an unfixed hooligan. Fifteen years later, he fell in love with Mariam, a black mixed-race girl who was abandoned after birth in Exeter, England. The two decided to settle in Norwich and start an ordinary life of having children.

However, life is not happy from then on. The humble status of British immigrants has always permeated the whole family like a nightmare. And Abbas kept silent about everything in Zanzibar, which made the couple like rootless duckweed, losing themselves on the issue of identity. Abbas suffered a stroke at the age of sixty-three and remained in bed until his death. During these dying years, the distant homeland that he spent most of his life trying to forget became more and more clear in his mind, haunting him in his dreams. Encouraged by his wife, he finally told a tape recorder slowly his complete life story, leaving the last gift of his life for the children.