There's more than one way to pilfer. One can steal material goods, but one can also steal more precious items, such as a person's dreams or their trust in others. It's no spoiler to state that a lot gets stolen in Theft, a quietly powerful novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah (The Last Gift), the Tanzanian British writer who received the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature. Start with 17-year-old Raya, who falls for a Tanzanian soldier, "a heroic, slender warrior" back from military training in Cuba, only for her father to insist she marry a divorced building contractor in his 40s who demands that "her duty required submission" in bed. He's relentlessly cruel, so when their son, Karim, turns three, Raya leaves with the boy for good.
The family has more highs and lows in store in this constantly surprising work. Raya finds a new love in pharmacy owner Haji and marries him when Karim is 14. She and Haji move to Dar es Salaam while Karim stays in Zanzibar to complete his early schooling. When he gets a scholarship from the University of Dar es Salaam, he moves in with Raya and Haji, who have taken in a distant family relation, 13-year-old Badar, as their servant. Much more follows, including Karim's marriage to Fauzia, who had "the falling sickness" as a child and fears a recurrence; Badar's job at a fancy hotel; and, of course, acts of thievery--all of it set against the backdrop of a new Tanzanian government taking over from British rule. Elegantly told in Gurnah's customarily spare prose, Theft is a hypnotic family novel from one of literature's greatest stylists. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer