Postcolonial British prose: A. Gurnah’s novel “Desertion”.

Abstract

The article is devoted to the work of the Nobel laureate in literature – the British post-colonial writer with Tanzanian roots A. Gurnah. The purpose of the work is to analyze his   novel "Desertion" (untranslated into Russian) in the context of postcolonial discourse, paying special attention to the poetics of the text. It is known, in 1970-80s, as a result of the collapse of the colonial world and the influence of post-structuralist philosophy, a post-colonial theory arises. Today in the world this theory is one of the leading in the study of modern literature. We have chosen cultural-historical, psychoanalytic and structural methods for analyzing the text of A. Gurnah. Racism, women's rights, education problems on the African continent, emigration become key meaning-forming topics of the analyzed novel. These problems are intertwined with the theme of spiritual search, love between a man and a woman, good and evil, universal values are put in the center of the corner. The text contains an understanding of such moral and ethical categories as shame and guilt, the line between the forbidden and the permissible. Addressing thematic diversity, the author explores phenomena such as trauma and ways to overcome it through pronunciation or silence. The work is characterized by many voices, complex focalization.