Cultural Displacement, Silence, and the Quest for Belonging in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “The Last Gift”

Abstract

Abdulrazak Gurnah’s The Last Gift explores the psychological, emotional, and cultural aspects of migrant life in postcolonial England. Abbas protagonist in the novel considers exile as merely a geographical displacement but also as a constant struggle including silence, trauma, and a fractured identity. The paper analyses the roles of memory and silence as means of oppression and survival, enabling Gurnah’s characters to recreate their identities after colonial dislocation. This paper examines how Abbas’s suppressed narratives and his family’s genetic silences reflect alienation. Cathy Caruth’s notion of trauma as an unhealed psychological wound and Stuart Hall’s perspective of cultural identity as a “production” rather than an unchanging essence. Homi Bhabha’s ideas of hybridity and unhomeliness explain the novel’s depiction of the immigrant’s fragmented sense of belonging, while Derrida’s concept of hospitality emphasises the struggle between acceptance and rejection in the migrant experience. The research contends that The Last Gift represents displacement as a state that leads to both loss and rebirth, as Gurnah’s characters find meaning through narrative and intergenerational reconciliation. Finally, Gurnah’s narrative converts trauma into memories, facilitating the expression of identity within the delicate realm between memory and belonging.