This year Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in Zanzibar (part of Tanzania from 1964), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Swedish Academy called his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”. Gurnah was a teenager in 1964 when Zanzibar’s Arab Sultan was overthrown by African revolutionaries. Thousands of Arabs and South Asians were killed in the massacre that followed. Hailing from a family of Arab heritage that feared persecution, Gurnah left for Britain as a refugee in 1969. More from Gurnah on his arrival in Britain here. (Among the South Asian families that fled the upheaval in Zanzibar was that of Farrokh Bulsara, later known as Freddy Mercury)
Abdulrazak Gurnah has called on Europe to greet migrants with compassion rather than ‘barbed wire’. Taking my cue from the international recognition of Gurnah and his portrayal of the refugee experience, this quiz focuses on fiction that explores the travails of refugees and migrants.
Questions
1) Starting with Zanzibar and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s heritage, which country in the Middle East controlled Zanzibar from 1698 to 1861? A succession struggle after the ruler’s death in 1856 led to the British separating Zanzibar from the country in 1861. It was a major hub of the slave and spice trades and colonial powers jostled for control. Zanzibar became a British protectorate in 1890. Until the 1960s, a sizeable population with ties to the Middle Eastern country remained in Zanzibar. Which country? (refugees from Zanzibar played an important role in the modernisation of this country from the 1970s)
(Update on October 29 to reflect that the succession struggle was between the late ruler’s sons and not the ruler and cousin as mentioned in earlier draft)
2) Octavia E. Butler was the first Black woman to be acclaimed as a major science fiction writer. She was honoured with the Nebula and Hugo awards, the top American prizes in science fiction and fantasy writing.
The main protagonist in her dystopian novel ParableoftheSower leads a group of refugees who flee California, which is reeling under global warming, water shortages and mass unemployment. In the sequel ParableoftheTalents (1998) her transplanted community confronts a newly-elected Christian fundamentalist president from Texas. What was the fictional president’s campaign slogan?
3) The writer Sam Selvon’s father was a Tamil Christian from Madras and his mother an Anglo-Indian. Selvon’s pioneering novel TheLonelyLondoners was published in 1956. It was a breakout novel depicting which immigrant community? (TheLonelyLondoners was also a pioneer in how it used the lingo of the author’s native region, freeing future works from the shackles of ‘standard English’)
4) This fictional character retired as chief of police in his country in 1904. During World War I he was forced to leave for England as a refugee and ended up in the fictional village of Styles St. Mary. Who and which country? (in creating this character, the author was influenced by the sudden arrival of refugees from this particular country)
5) Amitav Ghosh’s TheHungryTide published in 2004 was the first work of fiction in English to dwell extensively on one of the worst massacres in independent India, the scale of which is still little known outside the region where it took place. While there is no precise death toll because of an official clampdown, survivors say thousands of refugees were killed as police encircled an island in 1979. Where?
6) DoLog in Urdu and Hindi was this poet’s first novel. It begins with a truck leaving the town of Campbellpur with refugees in 1946 as British India is set to be partitioned. The author translated it himself into English under the name Two (English version was published in 2017). Who?
7) TheFarming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat is set in the border town of Alegria in the 1930s. Hewing close to real-life events, the novel depicts the massacre of thousands from one country who were working in the relatively better off neighbouring country. People were rounded up based on how they pronounced the word for ‘parsley’ and this massacre orchestrated by a dictator in 1937 is known as the Parsley massacre. Others fled across a river at the border known as Massacre River (from an earlier massacre). Name the two countries.
8) Judith Kerr, the author of the popular children’s book TheTigerWhoCametoTea also published a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels based on her childhood experiences as a refugee forced to flee her home country. The title of the first book published in 1971 was based on a stuffed toy she had to leave behind. Name the book.
9) A Professor at the University of Southern California, his 2015 debut novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He was himself a refugee, forced to leave the country of his birth when only four. The book starts with events in 1975. The fictional narrator flees to the U.S. but remains a spy for the country that he leaves, embedded with refugees finding their way in the U.S. Name the book and author.
10) Novelist Isabel Allende was herself a refugee, living in Venezuela for 13 years after the 1973 coup in Chile by General Pinochet. The two main protagonists in her 2019 novel ALongPetaloftheSea are refugees fleeing Spain during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s as Francisco Franco seized power. The fictional couple made it to a ship organised by a real-life Chilean diplomat that took about 2,000 refugees to Chile. Who is the diplomat who chartered the ship? (He is a globally well-known figure though not as a diplomat)
11) She earned international acclaim through her second novel published in 2006. Its title comes from the flag of an independence movement, which was crushed in a brutal civil war that raged between 1967 and 1970. Among the themes of the book is internal displacement as wounded refugees escape in a train. In real life, both the author’s grandfathers died in the conflict. She drew upon her family’s own experiences for the book. Name the novel and author.
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4. Saw someone respond to this question on twitter. Didn't know the origin story; only familiar with couple of short stories and Murdet on the Orient Express.
5. Marichjhapi massacre? Didn't know the theme of Amitav's book but became aware of this horror due to social-media posts by Ambedkarites.
6. Gulzar
7. Wild guess, since I can't come up with probable African countries - Dominican Republic and Haiti.
1. Oman 4. Poirot. 5. The name escapes me but it starts with an M 9. Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer (he grew up in the city where I live now!) 7. Haiti and Dominican Republic 11. Is it Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus?
I think I can answer questions 1 and 4. I think the country is Oman. And the answer to question 4 is Hercule Poirot - Belgium’s greatest export to the UK!
1.Oman ( Stonetown -Zanzibar was once Oman's capital for a decade)
2.
3. Caribbean- Indian
4.
5 Morichjhapi-Sundarbans
6.Gulzar
7. Haiti & Dominican Republic -Rafael Trujillo's brutal era
8.
9.
10.Pablo Neruda
11. (Thanks to your our quiz prize Purple Hibiscus- I got to know about Ngozi Adichie. Half yellow sun - Biafra flag
1. Oman
2. M a ga?
3. Bangladeshis of Brick Lane
4. Saw someone respond to this question on twitter. Didn't know the origin story; only familiar with couple of short stories and Murdet on the Orient Express.
5. Marichjhapi massacre? Didn't know the theme of Amitav's book but became aware of this horror due to social-media posts by Ambedkarites.
6. Gulzar
7. Wild guess, since I can't come up with probable African countries - Dominican Republic and Haiti.
8. Mishka the bear
9.
10. Neruda
11. Half of a Yellow Sun about Biafra
1. Oman 4. Poirot. 5. The name escapes me but it starts with an M 9. Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer (he grew up in the city where I live now!) 7. Haiti and Dominican Republic 11. Is it Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus?
I think I can answer questions 1 and 4. I think the country is Oman. And the answer to question 4 is Hercule Poirot - Belgium’s greatest export to the UK!
1. Oman
2. -
3. West Indian Immigrants
4. Poirot, Belgium
5. Lakshadweep?
6. Gulzar
7. Haiti, Dominican Republic
8. The Stolen Teddy Bear
9. Marlon James, Jamaica?
10. Neruda
11. Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie