I read this because of the Nobel Prize acclaim. I do not agree! It was boring!! Books are suppose to take us to places we haven't been and put us inside characters that help us understand people who are not like us. I've read dozens of books that helped me understand immigrants, people of color, people coming to a different country where they don't speak the language or fit the "culture", and second generation immigrants. This book did none of that. It was a disgusting diatribe of depressing people continually regurgitating unhappiness. It wasn't fun to read, creative, or witty or any characteristic of a good, let alone great, author. I am not a literature professor by any means, but I cannot image how anyone could find brilliance or creativity in the writing.

How could this author ever be compared to the likes of Hemmingway, Pasternak, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Morrison, or even Dylan??? ( )

I have been a fan of Gurnah since I first read his [By the Sea] back in '06 or thereabouts. I have since read everything he has written, save [Paradise], which has disappeared somewhere into this house. Gurnah has not set this book in his native Zanzibar, not nearby Tanzania (actually, Zanzibar is now part of Tanzania), but in the UK.

The story is a family one. Abbas was once a sailor before meeting his wife Maryam in the UK and settling down. He has never talked about his past and thus his specific origins are a bit of a mystery to the rest of the family (they know he is vaguely from East Africa). Maryam was a foundling who as a teen ran away from her last foster home and eventually met Abbas. She knows nothing about her origins. The couple has two children, Jamal and Hanna, both born in the UK and now adults. The children are reasonably successful, but as they move through life there is a distinct sense of being adrift, a sort of rootlessness about them. When Abbas has a stroke, it serves as a catalyst within the family and he begins to tell his secrets (and I'm not going to give it away here). At roughly the same, Maryam begins to search for who she is. Jamal and Hanna must cope with a lot of new information, not all of it welcome.

There are so many books about immigrants, identity...etc and to some extent this is another immigration story of identity struggle, but I thought Gurnah did something a little different here by having the children grow up with essentially no cultural heritage, no "roots" but their rather shallow UK roots. And then what does one do when suddenly you have all this new information about your family's history; how does this affect who you are? What does it mean for Abbas to overcome personal pain and tell his secrets, or for his wife to discover where she comes from, and for the children to learn these things about their parents? His characters are well-rendered and credible, as are the family dynamics. It is much more nuanced then my poor commentary here is probably communicating. The Last Gift is an intriguing exploration of what our cultural heritage can mean to us all, and the true meaning of home and family. ( )

Abbas is a 63 year old man living in the English town of Norwich, after emigrating to the UK from Zanzibar decades before. He is faithful to his wife Maryam, a mixed descent British woman orphaned as an infant, whose marriage to Abbas allowed her to escape from a troubled childhood. His relationship with her and their two adult children, Hanna and Jamal, is more formal and distant than warm and loving.

Abbas collapses outside of his front door on the way home from work, and suffers a stroke that both weakens and severely disables him. leaving him mute and unable to walk for long distances. As part of his recovery process, he is encouraged by his medical team and Maryam to write about his past life before he came to the UK. In the process, he makes several comments to his wife that permits him to remember long suppressed memories and closely guarded secrets about his life as a child and young man that have continued to haunt and affect him. His children, particularly Hanna, reject their father's past stories as "immigrant drama", but as Abbas' condition worsens, the four family members attempt to reconcile their shared pain and differences.

The Last Gift was a beautifully rendered novel about family, love and secrets, along with the struggle of immigrants to adapt to a new land and to come to terms with the past. However, I found it difficult to connect on a personal level with the characters, as all maintained an emotional distance throughout the book. Fans of Gurnah's prior books will probably appreciate this one, but I would recommend his two Booker longlisted novels, Paradise and By the Sea for those who are unfamiliar with him. ( )

I’m always drawn to novels that feature an older person looking back over the course of their life, so this had immediate appeal. It tells the story of Abbas, a 63 year old engineer who’s experiencing his first diabetic crisis. His wife Maryam tends him and his children Jamal and Hanna also gather and give some support. The first collapse is followed by a series of strokes and Abbas is left bed bound. As his physical condition deteriorates he (and also his wife) feel compelled to reveal the secrets they’ve long concealed.

The story moves across the decades of these two lives piecing together the family history through memories and flashbacks. We learn that as a young man Abbas was from East Africa and became a sailor, who didn’t settle down until he met Maryam in the UK in a Boots store; they eloped and had been together ever since. Over time Abbas became gradually more isolated and silent but he had been a good husband and father. The children have happy memories of his lively stories and sense of fun.

Maryam herself had been a foundling, left on the steps of a hospital in the UK. She had lived in several foster homes but knows nothing about her origins. She had got work in a hospital canteen and worked there ever since. Without any kin she and Abbas relied on each other, always aware that they were coloured people in a white world – always feeling different, apart.

The children also struggle with this legacy. Both are born and educated in England, yet sometimes they still feel like outsiders. Hanna is in a long standing, but less than perfect relationship with a white man which starts to unravel when she spends the weekend with his family and realizes how racist and condescending they are. At lunch someone is grilling Hanna about her origins. Her boyfriend’s father says “Hold on. You’re about to make our jungle bunny cry.’

As Abbas gradually recovers Maryam develops new interests and begins to volunteer at a local refugee centre. She gives Abbas a tape recorder and encourages him to record the snippets he can recall of his early life. Towards the end of the novel she summons the 2 children and tells the truth about their parents. No spoilers here.

Hanna doesn’t want to hear about these ‘shitty, vile immigrant tragedies’…but gradually she adjusts. She realizes that her father was a man of intellect and ambition – not just a sailor. She dumps the boyfriend and in the end she and Jamal are considering the possibility of a trip to Zanzibar to see where their Ba came from.

That is ‘the last gift’ – the inclination to reconnect with their African past, the full knowledge of the complexity of their parents' lives, and a stronger sense of their own identity.

It’s a quiet novel, full of melancholy and regret, but it’s very well written and has much to recommend it. It’s a story about shame, guilt, exile, secrets and identity. ( )