Abstract
As of now German colonial presence on the African continent and East-Africa’s campaign during WWI and WWII is little presented in history as well as in literature particularly novels. This present study aims to fill this gap by examining Abdul Razak Gurnah’s historical novel Afterlives (2020) in the light of Postcolonial critic Frantz Fanon’s The Wretch of the Earth (1961). Through textual analysis, the qualitative study intends to seek the ways colonialism (both German and British) influence East-Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the perspective of WWI and WWII and aftermath of its destruction. Moreover, the study attempts to examine how Gurnah’s novel presents psychological effects of colonization on indigenous people who witnessed it and how violence and war contributed in the process of decolonization. The findings of the research shows that colonization as well as decolonization is a violentphenomenon in which both colonizers and colonized use violence as a tool to maintain or gain power. The native people, as described in aforementioned novel, strive to survive in inter and aftermath of war although their constant encounter with violence and identity crisis (degradation) led them towards severe psychological disturbance. The novel also presents the native people responses to such destruction and war through interconnected lives of its major characters Ilyas, Hamza and Afiya who represented pro and anti-German views of colonization and of war. The study concludes that determination of native African to survive through love and kindness are key factors which help them to retrieve their lost souls after cruel circumstances of colonial life, war and ruin.
