Plunderers of the human spirit: A criticism of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Gravel Heart in terms of literary trauma theory

Abstract

Gravel Heart (2017) is the ninth postcolonial novel of Tanzanian-born British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah who was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature. Being a part of his literary diction, his novel explores in-depth justification of traumatic migrant stories with neurological symptoms like sense of (un)belonging, assimilation, naturalisation, the hybridity of values and norms, and a keen sense of in-betweenness. Born in the postcolonial setting of his hometown, the migrant protagonist is exposed to the material and spiritual confiscations of the western rulers or their representatives which brings about neurotic concerns like an inevitable sense of shame and quilt. It is clear in his novel that his hometown and interpersonal relations were corrupted and abused by the local contributors of the colonial hegemonies. Having a chance to emigrate to England as a seemingly reward for his surrendering at the beginning, the narrator questions his use in such a plundered world even after years of wranglings back in his motherland. In this study, the theme of ‘plunderers of the human spirit’ in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Gravel Heart will be discussed in terms of literary trauma theory which aims to legitimise trauma narratives by literary devices such as fragmentation, language manipulation, repetition, and intertextuality to extrapolate the meaning arising from extreme traumatic stress within the frame of postcolonial novels