In post-colonial literature, “exile” includes three meanings, namely, regional, racial, psychological, and cultural ones. The Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, constructed the image of the African diaspora represented by the Abbas family in his work The Last Gift, which showed the process of their triple exile and personal identity pursuit. Based on the close reading of the text, this paper analyzes the diaspora status and identity reconstruction of the main characters in the work, aiming at further supplementing the research system of Gurnah’s novels.

Xinyi Liu. “Exile” in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s The Last Gift. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2024) Vol. 7, Issue 4: 49-54. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2024.070407.

[1] Han Wei, & Ren Zhifeng(2022). Postcolonial-Intellectual-Identity: Three Facets of Gurnah’s Fiction. Foreign Language Education, 43(03), 106-112. 

[2] Wang Zhuo & Guo Danyang(2022). Status, Problems and Prospects of Domestic and International Research on Gurnah. Foreign Languages and Their Teaching, (03), 113-121+150-151.

[3] Ren Yiming (2008). Postcolonial: Critical Theory and Literature. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

[4] Gurnah, A. (2014). The Last Gift. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

[5] Said, E. W. (1994). Representations of the Intellectual. London: Vintage.

[6] Wang Huimin, & Jing Zhen(2016). Spiritual Guardianship and Pursuit under Identity Dispersal - on the Theme of Dispersal and Identity Construction in The Kite Runner. Foreign Language and Their Teaching, (02), 130-135+148.

[7] Zhu Zhenwu, & You Mingyue(2022). Identity and Community Consciousness - The Creative Purpose of the Latest Nobel Prize Writer Gurnah’s The Last Gift. Shandong Foreign Language Teaching, 43(02), 71-82.

[8] Freud, S. (2005). On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia. London: Penguin Books.

[9] Zhang Shuhua, Li Haiying and Liu Fang (2012). A Review of Identity Research. Psychological Research, 5(01), 21-27.

[10] Yang Jincai (2008). Some Propositions of Contemporary British Novel Research. Contemporary Foreign Literature, (03), 64-73.

[11] Wang Xiaotao (2016). Dispersal, Discipline, and the Politics of Marginality in The White Teeth. Tribune of Social Sciences, (01), 68-75.

[12] Said, E. W. (1994).Orientalism. New York: Vintage.

[13] Ma Depu, & Long Tao(2022). The Transmutation of Modern Racism and Its Individualistic Roots, Ethno-National Studies, (01), 32-47+143-144.

[14] Han Xiaoyan, & Tian Xiaoli(2016). Institution, Culture and Everyday Corroboration - Situational Identity of Alien Migrants and Their Children. Journal of Tsinghua University (Philosophy and Social Sciences), 31(06), 175-182+195. 

[15] Zheng Zhouming(2021, October 14). Integrating the Identity of Writer and Critic, Reflecting on Colonial History and Immigration. Literature Press, pp. 2.

[16] Zhu Zhenwu, & Yuan Junqing(2019). The Periodic Representation of Dispersed Literature and Its World Significance - Taking African English Literature as an Example. Social Sciences in China, 07, 135-158+207.