Historical Metafiction and the Subversion of Colonial Metanarratives in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives

Abstract

This study examines the narrative strategies through which Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel Afterlives (2020) subverts totalizing colonial historical narratives using the framework of postmodern historiographic metafiction. Positioned within the context of early twentieth-century German-occupied East Africa during the Maji Maji Rebellion and its aftermath, the novel challenges Hegelian and Enlightenment metanarratives of imperial progress and civilizing missions. Utilizing Linda Hutcheon’s postmodern theoretical model along with Jean-François Lyotard’s critique of grand narratives, this paper analyzes how Gurnah reconstructs history through the subjective, localized experiences of four central characters: Khalifa, Ilyas, Afiya, and Hamza. The methodology adopts a qualitative, interpretive text-based analytical approach to trace how literary devices—such as temporal distortion, linguistic playfulness, intertextuality, and character-driven fragmentation—destabilize official colonial archives. The findings demonstrate that Gurnah contrasts macro-historical events against marginalized personal micro-narratives (petits récits), thereby foregrounding the structural violence, systemic displacement, and human resilience obscured by imperial historiography. Ultimately, the study concludes that Afterlives functions as a site of postcolonial resistance, demonstrating how historical metafiction exposes the ideological constructs of colonial history and restores agency to historically silenced subjects.

Keywords: Postmodernism, Historiographic Metafiction, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Metanarrative, Afterlives, Post colonialism, Linda Hutcheon.