Zanzibari Worlds

A Relational Reading of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s "By The Sea" and Adam Shafi Adam’s "Vuta n’kuvute"

Abstract

My aim is to bring into conversation two novels, each by a renowned author from Zanzibar: Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea (published in 2001) and Shafi Adam Shafi’s Vuta n’kuvute (“Tug of War,” published in 1999), which offer literary imaginings of Zanzibari worlds in the turbulent 1960s. The two novels—written in English and Swahili, respectively—have never been brought into relation with each other, since they belong to two different literary worlds. Questioning this dichotomy, however, I will show moments where the novels overlap, situate Gurnah’s By the Sea in a local Zanzibari context, and sketch out the more global panorama and multitude of narratives in Shafi’s Vuta n’kuvute, while also drawing attention to the novels’ differences. Lastly, instead of ceaselessly confirming its own (Western-dominated) paradigms of analysis, I argue that Indian Ocean literary studies needs to take into account greater literary diversity in terms of language, narrative, and historical perspective in order to gain a more diverse perspective on Indian Ocean worlds.