“But what’s it about?”

The common question that haunts many writers is one where their audience wants an incredibly complex creation like a novel reduced to a few – sometimes very few – words. Do you reveal the plot? The setting? The characters? The themes? The era?

Take “Hamlet.” What do you say? It’s about a Prince of Denmark… Okay, hardly gripping. It’s about a series of failed relationships; fathers and daughters, mothers and sons. It’s about power and succession; foreign intervention. Sounds a little complex. There’s a ghost, so it’s a ghost story too. Treachery and betrayal. Love and tragedy. Beauty and loyalty… Each would be true in a sense but none would actually do the work justice.

Is the author’s own background, race, life – now included in a ghastly section called “context” for students of literature – to be included? It’s a response to the playwright’s son’s death; true again but only partially illuminating. The answer usually lies in “read it yourself.” What, then, of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novels?

Gurnah says that he hopes to create narratives that are “accurate, truthful and possibly powerful accounts” out of the experiences of individuals. As a writer, he has the privilege of creating a more nuanced response, allowing a narrative to acquire reflection, depth, and a significance not immediately available to the original owner of the tale.