This book was hard for me to read. It is not one I ever would have picked up on my own and had it not been a bookseller recommendation I would not have finished it. Be that as it may, I was glad that I stuck with it. Even though it is a deep and difficult read, it allowed me perspective of a time, culture, and country I know little about. The author words create a flow that makes the reading enjoyable even with the difficult story.

This isn't a book I would recommend for fun, but I would recommend it as a story full of experiences and emotions. Something different, heart wrenching, and surprising contemplation. ( )

The narrator of this novel had lived all of his life in a seaside town somewhere in East Africa (the country is never named but considering his travels and some of the other details in the novel, if can only be Tanzania). And here he is, having finished school in the first years of independence from the British and getting stuck in time because the results of the exams which will determine his future are held by the new country in an attempt to somehow control the youth. So he is aimlessly spending his days trying not to lose all hope of escaping his home, remembering his childhood (which was anything but happy) and waiting for something to change - the exam results to come out, a passport to be issued so he can visit his uncle in Nairobi, anything to break the monotony.

The start of the novel is brutal, with raw language which is almost vulgar. Its description of what happened to our narrator and his brother really highlights that the problem of post-colonialism had always been a problem of colonialism first - independence does not change anything but the rulers. And then there is Nairobi, Kenya and the stark difference between the two cities and countries - although admittedly, the squalid seaside town and the capital are as different as the narrator's home and his uncle's.

First novels can be tricky - especially when one reads them after they had read later works by the author. Knowing what Abdulrazak Gurnah is going to write in the future allows you to see some of the beginnings of his style and stories in this novel; without that knowledge I suspect I would not have liked the novel as much as I did. But even without that, it is a decent novel.

At the end it is a coming of age novel from an author who is still finding his craft - you can see where it is going but the ideas which will define some later novels are either just hinted at or underdeveloped. In a way, we see the narrator growing up and learning that the world is bigger than his town at the same time as the author tries to find out what works. ( )

Gurnah's first novel is set in a squalid coastal city in an East African country that resembles the author's native Tanzania, in the years following its independence from Great Britain. The narrator (Hassan) is a teenage boy who seeks to escape from his drunken and depraved father, who is a local government official, and the prejudice that limits opportunities of Arabs like himself. He finishes high school and awaits the result of the examination that will determine his future, but months have passed by without notification. His mother encourages him to visit her brother, who has become a wealthy businessman in Nairobi. There the wise if not worldly Hassan is exposed to a life he can only dream of, an opulent home with rich food, all the luxuries of modern life, and a beautiful cousin that seems to favor him. However, the veneer of this idyllic life is quickly uncovered by Hassan, as he learns more about his uncle and his past, and as he sees the rampant corruption and hypocrisy that infests this modern African city.

[Memory of Departure] is a well written debut effort that lightly touches on the problems of postcolonial African societies, but it lacks the impact of his later novels [By the Sea] and [Desertion]. ( )

This is Zanzibarian author Gurnah's first novel published in the late 1980s. It's a coming-of-age story set in a wretched seaport town in east Africa. We are powerless against a potent narrative that draws us into young Hassan's life, into the brutal poverty he and his family suffers, and into his struggle against it. A reprieve of sorts comes to him in the form of a summons from his wealthy uncle in Nairobi and we go along with Hassan as he encounters this other world. While not quite as sophisticated as his later books, in my opinion, this book is still mesmerizing and Gurnah's gifts are already apparent. ( )