riya

“In their books I read unflattering accounts of my history, and because they were unflattering, they seemed truer than the stories we told ourselves. I read about the diseases that tormented us, about the future that lay before us, about the world we lived in and our place in it. It was as if they had remade us, and in ways that we no longer had any recourse but to accept, so complete and well-fitting was the story they told about us. I don’t suppose the story was told cynically, because I think they believed it too.”
― Abdulrazak Gurnah, By the Sea

“Aime la vérité, mais pardonne à l’erreur.”
― Voltaire

“We were strolling along the waterfront, his favourite walk, going nowhere in particular, the postcolonial condition.”
― Abdulrazak Gurnah, Admiring Silence

“And at school there was little or no time for those other stories, just an orderly accumulation of the real knowledge they brought to us, in books they made available to us, in a language they taught us.”
― Abdulrazak Gurnah, By the Sea