Speaker 1: Hello there, It's Ruby Jones and I'm back to share
Speaker 1: another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast,
Speaker 1: hosted by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features
Speaker 1: conversations with some of the most talented writers from Australia
Speaker 1: and around the world. In this episode, Michael sits sound
Speaker 1: for a chat with Nobel Prize winning author Abdul Razak Gerner.
Speaker 1: As usual, I'm joined by Michael to tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the episode.
Speaker 2: Hi, Michael, Ruby Jones.
Speaker 1: Hello, So Michael, I think it's fair to say that
Speaker 1: your guest on Read This this Week reached the pinnacle
Speaker 1: of literary success in twenty twenty one when he was
Speaker 1: awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. How life changing is
Speaker 1: it to win a prize like that for a writer.
Speaker 2: Look, it's the big one in many ways, but the
Speaker 2: Nobel Prize is a peculiar beast, truth be told. I
Speaker 2: digress for a second, but there's this amazing video that
Speaker 2: you can watch on YouTube from a BBC report when
Speaker 2: Doris Lessing won the Nobel and it's just this fantastic clip.
Speaker 2: She's climbing out of a taxi and she's got all
Speaker 2: these bags of grocery. She's eighty eight, She looks tired,
Speaker 2: she looks grumpy, she looks over everything, and then all
Speaker 2: these people start thrusting kind of microphones and cameras in
Speaker 2: her face and bombarding her. And eventually she's like, who
Speaker 2: are you here to photograph? And the journalist says, we're
Speaker 2: photographing you. Have you heard the news You've just won
Speaker 2: the Nobel Prize And she looks at them, massive eye roll,
Speaker 2: shoulders slumped, and she just says, are christ utter perfection?
Speaker 2: Here is someone who's won arguably one of the biggest
Speaker 2: literary prizes in the world, and she has no fucks
Speaker 2: to give. I love it, and the Nobela is a
Speaker 2: bit like that. It's kind of exalted in literary circles,
Speaker 2: and yet it doesn't really have an impact on sales.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really cut through to the consciousness. The best
Speaker 2: thing about it really is that it highlights authors outside
Speaker 2: the anglosphere. So the kind of works that we would
Speaker 2: normally only find in translation. You know an E know
Speaker 2: or I don't know, ogatok. People like that suddenly get
Speaker 2: attention in the English language world, and that's amazing. And
Speaker 2: the guests this week. As you noted, Abdul Razak Gurner
Speaker 2: won the Nobel Prize in twenty twenty one. Now he's
Speaker 2: London based, tanzan enborn. He writes in English, but the
Speaker 2: Nobel for him becomes this kind of massive boost. He's
Speaker 2: been spending a career writing these kind of extraordinary novels that,
Speaker 2: more than anything else, capture what it is to be
Speaker 2: a refugee, the nature of human displacement, the kind of
Speaker 2: long shadow of colonialism. But it takes those works from
Speaker 2: the kind of literary sphere and make sure that they
Speaker 2: get greater awareness, greater recognition, and that's super exciting.
Speaker 1: And so in this episode, you and abdol Razak speak
Speaker 1: at length about his latest novel, Theft. So tell me
Speaker 1: a little about this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to be fair, he actually started writing Theft before
Speaker 2: he won the Nobel Prize. And it's in many ways
Speaker 2: classic Gurner. It follows three very different young people, Karem,
Speaker 2: Falsia and Baddah, and their lives kind of intersect in
Speaker 2: all these interesting ways that culminate in this shattering false
Speaker 2: accusation that splits them apart. Is it such a terrific
Speaker 2: novel and oneful bit of writing. And you know, for
Speaker 2: all my bladder about the Nobel Prize, it's a reminder
Speaker 2: that it's what's happening on the line, in the sentence
Speaker 2: that really makes great literature, not all the literary accolades
Speaker 2: that surrounded and Abdulraza is a writer that listeners really
Speaker 2: should catch up with, if they haven't already.
Speaker 1: Coming up in just a moment, Zanzibar is still home
Speaker 1: for abdul Razak Gurna.
Speaker 2: I might start with what is, in many ways the
Speaker 2: ultimate obvious and banal question, which is the tyranny of
Speaker 2: expectation your first novel after being awarded the Nobel Prize
Speaker 2: for Literature, and whether that felt like a burden or
Speaker 2: at the very least something that got into your head
Speaker 2: as you are writing theft No.
Speaker 3: Actually, I can say without any sort of pretense of
Speaker 3: you know or whatever, it so happened that I was
Speaker 3: some way into the writing of the book when the
Speaker 3: announcement was made, maybe the first quarters of the book
Speaker 3: in the end, but with the announcement that had to stop,
Speaker 3: because I mean, there's just too much going on, and
Speaker 3: my sort of slight anxiety is doing all these wonderful
Speaker 3: things for the next several months or a year, and
Speaker 3: several months I should say, was when I go back
Speaker 3: to it, it's still going to be alive. And I
Speaker 3: went back to it, and it was, so I just
Speaker 3: picked up and carried on. And I guess, you know,
Speaker 3: because I wasn't writing it, but I was thinking about it.
Speaker 3: I was able to get back to it and move
Speaker 3: quite rapidly in the writing because I had so much
Speaker 3: time to plan and think and anticipate.
Speaker 2: Tell me about that process or that feeling of a
Speaker 2: liveness when it comes to writing a book. How much
Speaker 2: which is that about a narrative or a story, and
Speaker 2: how much of it's very much about character? Because this book,
Speaker 2: perhaps alongside several of your earlier ones, but this one
Speaker 2: is very acute la, a kind of three hammer, and
Speaker 2: character is essential to the energy and the beating heart
Speaker 2: of this book is that what's alive? Is it that
Speaker 2: you can return and see those people.
Speaker 3: Yes, not only that, but the loveliest thing and the
Speaker 3: most wonderful thing you can I can feel as a
Speaker 3: writer is to say, I haven't said this yet, and
Speaker 3: I haven't done that yet, and I haven't done the
Speaker 3: other yet. So it's not only what's there is alive,
Speaker 3: but they anticipated next parts are also already kind of
Speaker 3: like stirring. So in that sense, you see, you feel
Speaker 3: there is a destination. It isn't something that feels as
Speaker 3: if it's kind of so what. There are things to write,
Speaker 3: So that's the thing, that's the life.
Speaker 2: That's a nice thing. So I'm not stat that there
Speaker 2: is that kind of a desire to kind of push
Speaker 2: forward and for motion.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 3: There is something to continue with, you know, So it's
Speaker 3: not it doesn't feel as if it's kind of run
Speaker 3: into the ground or something like that.
Speaker 4: So there was that sense.
Speaker 3: But also in the meantime, of course, if you're talking
Speaker 3: about those figures, the characters, then I've had all the
Speaker 3: time to think about them and to sort of shape them,
Speaker 3: perhaps more in greater detail. Often I think of writing
Speaker 3: as this kind of process of accretion. I start with
Speaker 3: the core idea, and many of the things that end
Speaker 3: up being the novel are not there already, but there
Speaker 3: is the core idea, and then as you write, things
Speaker 3: pile up, as it were, and get more dense and
Speaker 3: more intense and so on.
Speaker 2: I want to return to the three young people at
Speaker 2: the heart of theft in a moment. But it seems
Speaker 2: to me the other element that's integral to this book
Speaker 2: is the setting, not just in terms of place, but
Speaker 2: in terms of time. And I'm curious about that period
Speaker 2: of the nineteen nineties in Zanzoba and what it was about,
Speaker 2: the kind of nineteen nineties into the turn of the
Speaker 2: millennium that so captured your imagination that you knew that
Speaker 2: was a period in life in Zanzeba that you wanted
Speaker 2: to explicitly write about.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sure, it was very much the period that it does
Speaker 3: start earlier, So I wanted that to be the kind
Speaker 3: of the focus period. But I also wanted to have
Speaker 3: the before as well. And the before was the period
Speaker 3: of just independence and the possibilities of that, the usual
Speaker 3: disappointments that almost all our former colonial territories countries experienced
Speaker 3: one way or another. But the nineties was a period
Speaker 3: of kind of change in the sense of some of
Speaker 3: the early ideas about what transformational society had already been
Speaker 3: abandoned in a way. The various attempts to make a
Speaker 3: socialist corporative state clearly.
Speaker 4: Did not work for Tanzania anyway.
Speaker 3: The excesses of the revolution in signsbag had quietened down.
Speaker 4: And one of the biggest factors, and this was tourism.
Speaker 3: You don't want to have people being mistreated and whatever
Speaker 3: when you have tourists around, because they won't come back.
Speaker 2: It does take the edge of the cocktail.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it does.
Speaker 3: So in a way, it did lead rather strangely to
Speaker 3: quieting things down, But that's not the only reason. The
Speaker 3: other reason was also the kind of a new generation
Speaker 3: of politicians and leaders now who many of whom were
Speaker 3: people who traveled elsewhere, studied elsewhere and coming back with
Speaker 3: different ideas about what is possible and what the future
Speaker 3: should hold. So it's a period of possibilities. But possibilities
Speaker 3: can also be seductive. They can seduce people from acting
Speaker 3: within integrity if you like, and or strengthen others and
Speaker 3: to say no, this is what I think is the
Speaker 3: best thing to do.
Speaker 4: So I wanted that sort of suggestion of things.
Speaker 3: Opening up, but also opening up in ways that were
Speaker 3: not always as clean as they looked.
Speaker 2: What was your relationship with zenz Aba at that time,
Speaker 2: during that period you had returned after the many years
Speaker 2: in which you hadn't visited, did you feel it all
Speaker 2: on the outsider returning after your period of exile or
Speaker 2: was it still your place?
Speaker 4: Can I just change that word exile? Yes, I don't
Speaker 4: like to use that word.
Speaker 3: Because I don't think it's it's a description of my circumstances. Really,
Speaker 3: because can me tell you why I think of exile
Speaker 3: as a condition one finds oneself in a principle, usually
Speaker 3: because you've said something in opposition, and in addition to that,
Speaker 3: your life is at risk in some way, so you
Speaker 3: choose exile rather than prison or being shot or whatever
Speaker 3: it is. I left because I wanted to study and
Speaker 3: it was impossible at that time, So my life was
Speaker 3: not at risk when I left. I was not in
Speaker 3: danger in any way at all. I was deprived of
Speaker 3: this or that, or that or the other, but I
Speaker 3: was not in danger. I think of exile as a vulnerable, dignified,
Speaker 3: indeed an admirable position. I don't blame that for what
Speaker 3: I did, which was to leave in order to improve
Speaker 3: my life.
Speaker 2: I'm very interested to hear that. I absolutely understand and
Speaker 2: respect that distinction. I mean, in that period you're away,
Speaker 2: even though it was by choice, did you feel a
Speaker 2: sense of estrangement from your homeland?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, I did what I did because I was eighteen
Speaker 3: years old and didn't know what I was doing, not
Speaker 3: suggesting that it was simply a straightforward, heroic thing that
Speaker 3: I thought, right, this is what I'm doing. Perhaps somebody
Speaker 3: who was older and knew a little bit more about
Speaker 3: the world would not have done that. But then at eighteen,
Speaker 3: you don't know those things. You do something which may
Speaker 3: be reckless, which may which may be brave, or what
Speaker 3: you don't know. You act because certain situations are intolerable. No,
Speaker 3: I don't want to live like this. So yeah, as
Speaker 3: soon as I left. One of the first questions I
Speaker 3: asked myself when I arrived in England was what have
Speaker 3: I done?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's a reasonable response to England
Speaker 2: in many respects historically, so that's a fair question, even
Speaker 2: beginning with culinary opportunities and they're moving on from there,
Speaker 2: what have you done?
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it was more. It was more the being
Speaker 3: so far away from everything I knew. And I think
Speaker 3: this probably is not spectacularly unique or anything like that.
Speaker 3: I'm sure it's the reaction of a stranger in a place,
Speaker 3: particularly young, without skills, without money, without you know, any
Speaker 3: kind of preparation. Really, but your question really was how
Speaker 3: did I feel when I return? Yeah, So the very
Speaker 3: first time I returned was after about seventeen years of
Speaker 3: being away because, like I said earlier, knew new leaders
Speaker 3: and so on, so there was an amnesty. So okay,
Speaker 3: everybody who left can return if they.
Speaker 4: Want to, and so I went.
Speaker 3: At that point, I was not sure what kind of
Speaker 3: reception I would receive. I thought, and this is to
Speaker 3: do the guilt of the person who's been away. You
Speaker 3: think either they will have forgotten me, or they'll say,
Speaker 3: as soon as you open your mouth to say you've changed,
Speaker 3: you're different, we don't know who you are, or something
Speaker 3: like that. In fact, none of those things. The welcome
Speaker 3: was incredible, and sure I was able to just come back,
Speaker 3: go back rather and feel at home. And subsequent returns,
Speaker 3: of which have been many since then, I have kind
Speaker 3: of simply reassured and endorsed and whatever all that feeling.
Speaker 3: The first thing my father said to me after I
Speaker 3: sort of greet at him, and he said, yes, hello,
Speaker 3: have you said your prayers today? And I said no,
Speaker 3: not yet. He said, well, you've got the mosque, now
Speaker 3: I say your prayers. And I felt like I was
Speaker 3: a son.
Speaker 4: Yeah he is he hasn't seen me for seventeen years.
Speaker 4: The first thing he says is have you said your prayers?
Speaker 4: Go to the mosque?
Speaker 2: Reverting to type with one's parents is exactly is a
Speaker 2: great privilege.
Speaker 3: You're still my son, I think, and do it what
Speaker 3: I expect you to do. So it was very easy
Speaker 3: to not even think about that, apart from obviously when
Speaker 3: our hosts, but it was very easy to sort of
Speaker 3: put that one side and be this other person that
Speaker 3: I recognizably like the one I left, even if obviously
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 2: When we return, we discussed the three characters of the
Speaker 2: heart of Theft, and Abdul Razakh is the problematic phenomenon
Speaker 2: of tourism in his hometown of Zanzoma.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: So coming back to Theft of the kind of central
Speaker 2: characters Kareem, Fasia and Bada. Was one of them prominent
Speaker 2: in the conception of this book or was it the
Speaker 2: interplay between the three of them that was your kind
Speaker 2: of insighting idea?
Speaker 4: Yes, better was the starting point.
Speaker 3: In fact, I think I began by writing that section
Speaker 3: which is now like the third chapter where he's taken
Speaker 3: to the house of Uncle ost Man. I think that's
Speaker 3: where I started. But because the starting point was the
Speaker 3: accusation of theft, so that was the starting point of
Speaker 3: the injustice of that, and it did how somebody in
Speaker 3: his situation powerless to resist such an accusation, how he
Speaker 3: might take that accusation, or what he might do about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So it was to start with, it was to see
Speaker 3: to position him, prepare him, if you like, for that
Speaker 3: episode that it's going to be that he's going to
Speaker 3: be accused. And as I was thinking of that, I
Speaker 3: was thinking, well, how is he what are going.
Speaker 4: To be his options as he were?
Speaker 3: And then that's how Kareem came to mind that he
Speaker 3: was going to be somebody who befriends him and takes
Speaker 3: him away. And then I'm not saying anymore because it
Speaker 3: really might spoil for the reader.
Speaker 2: Part of what I think is so acutely realized in
Speaker 2: this book is that the nature of a wrongful accusation
Speaker 2: is so embedded in ideas about how you are perceived
Speaker 2: by others and the ways in which they get to
Speaker 2: define who you are and what your capacity and your
Speaker 2: limitations are. And that seems to me to be a
Speaker 2: particularly interesting idea in this book.
Speaker 3: Yes, indeed one of the reasons for making better as
Speaker 3: he is, which is that he's a set powerless, but
Speaker 3: he's also aware of his powerlessness. He's an intelligent young man,
Speaker 3: which in a way is precisely what makes him so
Speaker 3: watchful and looking and seeing and trying to understand all
Speaker 3: the time. So for me, it seems that this is
Speaker 3: his greatest defense. He doesn't protest, he doesn't try to
Speaker 3: defend himself against these accusations, or rather he does only
Speaker 3: feebly as well. But he doesn't he doesn't have an
Speaker 3: answer because he has no position, he has no power,
Speaker 3: he has no support. But what he has is this
Speaker 3: ability and capacity to see and kind of think about
Speaker 3: it and learn something. And as you know, as as
Speaker 3: you said, you've read so of in your books, I'm
Speaker 3: always interested in how people manage to draw back from
Speaker 3: a traumatic situation, At a situation which is which is oppressing,
Speaker 3: how do they find the means to retrieve something from that,
Speaker 3: to get out of that. Whereas somebody like Kreem moves
Speaker 3: on because of his dynamism, I suppose it's it's ambition,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Something like whether doesn't move on but kind
Speaker 3: of calmly tries to understand.
Speaker 2: And at the heart of that is that kind of
Speaker 2: relationship between passivity as a character and active kind of engagement.
Speaker 2: And you know, between those two that becomes a kind
Speaker 2: of a major point of tension. There's that and I'm
Speaker 2: sorry I'm going to misquote this, but there's a wonderful
Speaker 2: moment when but things to himself, I've learned to endure that.
Speaker 2: You know, the steadiness that that not being reactive, that
Speaker 2: not defining yourself in oppositions to the things that happen
Speaker 2: to you can be a virtue in and of itself.
Speaker 3: Well, especially if you don't have the means to defend yourself,
Speaker 3: if you don't have the means to say that's nonsense,
Speaker 3: I'm not having that, don't talk to me like that,
Speaker 3: or something like that. It won't it won't achieve anything
Speaker 3: because of the situation that he's in. But in any case,
Speaker 3: it's also a kind of defense. Courtesy and silence and
Speaker 3: whatever can sometimes work to disarm.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the kind of third key figure in
Speaker 2: the present day narrative or the latter narrative of the book, Fauzia.
Speaker 2: Tell me about her and where she came from, and
Speaker 2: how you say her.
Speaker 3: Well, I got interested in the idea of epilepsy as
Speaker 3: I started to write, and somehow, you know, this is
Speaker 3: what I think of his writer's luck. I had this
Speaker 3: idea that I was starting to work or whether and
Speaker 3: I heard a story of somebody I knew whose son
Speaker 3: was born epileptic and very intelligent, gentleman, really talented, and
Speaker 3: the anxieties and difficulties that the parents had for this boy,
Speaker 3: this young man growing up. I think I was about fourteen,
Speaker 3: And so I became interested in the idea, Well, what
Speaker 3: are the symptoms, what is it?
Speaker 4: How can it be dealt with? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: And in the circumstances of a place like Zanziba, where
Speaker 3: where really health services are not very advanced still in fact,
Speaker 3: if anything they've gone down, how would that have been perceived?
Speaker 3: And how would the parents have coped with that? So
Speaker 3: that first gave me fare, but it also gave me
Speaker 3: Fausia's parents, you know, to see how they might cope,
Speaker 3: particularly the mother. And naturally, you know, in a novel,
Speaker 3: you've got to have a romance going on somewhay.
Speaker 2: You have a deeper romantic heart. It has to be said,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, more than many novelists with ten
Speaker 2: eleven books. And then I think I come to expect
Speaker 2: when I read a book from you, that there is
Speaker 2: going to be a romance.
Speaker 3: Absolutely okay, So it was obvious that this young woman
Speaker 3: was going to be part of the relationship with either
Speaker 3: possibly this career, but it becomes it's not just romance
Speaker 3: for on its own sake. It also becomes away of
Speaker 3: trying to understand human relations and how people are sympathetic
Speaker 3: or kind to each other all the opposite. And it
Speaker 3: seems to me that one to one, that is to
Speaker 3: say that a loving or not a loving relationship is
Speaker 3: the most intense kind of stage in whicher to explore
Speaker 3: capacity for compassion and kindness and empathy and all of
Speaker 3: those six and so we see how people cope.
Speaker 2: And I think compassion and kindness and empathy but also accommodation.
Speaker 2: You know that thing about modifying one's life for one's
Speaker 2: expectations because of love for another. And I think you
Speaker 2: capture those rhythms of a love story incredibly well, that
Speaker 2: idea that there is stuff that you give up willingly.
Speaker 3: For love, absolutely, and not only for love of man
Speaker 3: and woman, of course, but also for love of a child,
Speaker 3: to parent parent child, and all of these ways. So
Speaker 3: Farsia is also, of course a dutiful daughter as well
Speaker 3: as a clever and interested young woman. As Karim says
Speaker 3: of her, you think, maybe slight condescension, she's an intellectual.
Speaker 2: Coming back to the thing that you flagged before about
Speaker 2: Zanzibar in the nineties and the rise of tourism, because
Speaker 2: I do. I think that that's one of the threads
Speaker 2: in the book, and one of the kind of pressures
Speaker 2: that I just don't remember reading before is it's such
Speaker 2: a kind of potent postcolonial theme. But you deal with
Speaker 2: it very gracefully, very sharply.
Speaker 3: I think, well, of course, I know that tourism is
Speaker 3: a problematic phenomenon, and I know that very well, whereas
Speaker 3: answer Base can sert, but that wasn't the show I
Speaker 3: was interested in here, or rather, what I'm interested in
Speaker 3: is also in a kind of original way, the way
Speaker 3: these become disruptive forces. There is a way in which
Speaker 3: they are very much disruptive forces in the way they
Speaker 3: affect the economy, the way they encourage our leaders to
Speaker 3: become more corrupt than they're inclined to be. Because of
Speaker 3: all these commissions to get here, commissions to get there.
Speaker 4: But there is another way in which, as I said earlier,
Speaker 4: it forces.
Speaker 3: The administration like the government, to provide a more peaceful environment.
Speaker 3: It forces all kinds of developments to happen, roads to
Speaker 3: be made, so the country kind of gains something even
Speaker 3: as it loses some of the normal you know, rules
Speaker 3: of behavior and so on that people are drawn into.
Speaker 4: Less so now than I think at first.
Speaker 3: You know, where drugs become a problem, for example, or
Speaker 3: young women become involved in you know, relationships that are
Speaker 3: are going to be exploitative. But what also has happened
Speaker 3: is that the kind of tourists who now comes to Zanzibar.
Speaker 3: In the nineties it was very much people who are
Speaker 3: low budget or whatever the phrase is, whereas now people
Speaker 3: come as families and you get a different atmosphere with
Speaker 3: the tourists from the hedonistic young men and women who
Speaker 3: are coming when in the early eighties, sorry, the mid
Speaker 3: eighties and early nineties. It doesn't mean that the ugliness
Speaker 3: of tourism isn't isn't there, but it's more restrained I think.
Speaker 3: But what the most corrupt part of it is the
Speaker 3: way in which money money gets used to build flash
Speaker 3: hotels rather than money gets used to build better hospitals
Speaker 3: and better schools.
Speaker 2: And there is culturally an idea about the tourists. And
Speaker 2: I think it's Felsia's mother who has this amazing speech
Speaker 2: about tourists, kind of furious about them, that culturally the
Speaker 2: idea that it's superficial engagement with the place to be
Speaker 2: a tourist, that you're you're there in a purely kind
Speaker 2: of extractive sense without actually engaging. And it's struck me
Speaker 2: reading the book that to a certain extent, the argument
Speaker 2: seems to be that the tourist is almost the opposite
Speaker 2: of the novelist, That the novelist tries to build something
Speaker 2: and plant something and engage at a kind of deep
Speaker 2: level from the roots up, whereas a tourist is there
Speaker 2: taking what they can and skidding across the surface.
Speaker 3: Sure, I mean we're all we are all tourists, of course,
Speaker 3: one way or another. But I think sometimes the relationship
Speaker 3: between the tourists and the local person or the native
Speaker 3: culture is so unequal that you can go in and pretend,
Speaker 3: you know, like you go into these all inclusive sort
Speaker 3: of places, A lot of tourists go to those places
Speaker 3: and answer. But they go to their hotel by the beach,
Speaker 3: they get taken on bus tours to this, to that that,
Speaker 3: they get sent back to the hotel and they don't
Speaker 3: really see anything. It's not so easy to be able
Speaker 3: to do that if you if you're a tourist saying
Speaker 3: in the UK, because you're not in that position of
Speaker 3: an unequal power. You have to be on the underground,
Speaker 3: you have to rub shoulders with people, you have to
Speaker 3: hail a taxi, you know, sneered out by the waiters
Speaker 3: and that kind of thing. But I think I tried
Speaker 3: to do that to show how disengaged the tourist is,
Speaker 3: and of course in the mother's outbursts at the end
Speaker 3: is to have somebody say, you know, this is what
Speaker 3: do they want here? Why don't they have beaches in
Speaker 3: their own countries? Where do they come here?
Speaker 2: It feels like a very as far as albust good,
Speaker 2: feels like one that you have either heard on many
Speaker 2: occasions or maybe even outed yourself.
Speaker 3: I certainly apparently on many occasions, definitely, especially when when
Speaker 3: something unpleasant has come about has happened, as in this case,
Speaker 3: why did they come here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? But even then you're undercut it. There's a wonderful
Speaker 2: idea about all ages. Imagine they knew what was of
Speaker 2: value and now no longer do that. That this is
Speaker 2: that we all have this kind of failure to see
Speaker 2: the ways in which we're guilty of some of the
Speaker 2: same things.
Speaker 3: Yes, although of course that is aspirational talk. There is
Speaker 3: an argument about that because I think it's some mother
Speaker 3: who says that, or the father, and it's Fauzier who says.
Speaker 4: But that we need them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, they bring money, so we need them.
Speaker 3: So both sides, you know, there is an argument to
Speaker 3: be made on both sides.
Speaker 2: Abdul Razak Gerner's latest novel, Theft, is available at all
Speaker 2: good bookstores. Now.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to another special episode
Speaker 1: of Read This. We'll have another episode of Read This
Speaker 1: to share with you next Sunday. As always, if you
Speaker 1: want to dive further into Read This, you can search
Speaker 1: for it where if you listen to podcasts, there are
Speaker 1: more than eighty episodes in the archive for you to enjoy.
Speaker 1: See you next week.