Afterlives is British Noble Prize-winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah's work of historical fiction first published in 2020, but widely published in 2022. Gurnah's novel is set in the first part of the 20th century (until approximately 1950) and chronicles the lives of four people in the Swahili coast. Those four people must contend with German soldiers which are inhabiting the country and treating its people very poorly.
These four individuals must deal with the German government and its soldiers for many years; the book is set from the time in which Germany occupied the Swahili coast through several years after their occupation. The novel shows how the German occupation effected the four protagonists and their people over those years and show the aftermath of the German occupation.
Like virtually all of his other works, Afterlives received rapturously positive reviews when it was first published in 2020, and again in 2022 when it was more widely published across the world. The Washington Post, for instance, placed the novel on the "10 Best Books of 2022" list. In their review of the novel, Maaza Megiste of The Guardian wrote that "Afterlives is a compelling novel, one that gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten and refuses their erasure."
