Memory Writing and Identity Construction in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Admiring Silence

Abdulrazak Gurnah is an Afro-British diaspora writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. His works, which center on issues like identity, racial tensions, and historical writing, mostly depict the living conditions of colonial peoples, refugees, and immigrants. Admiring Silence is a novel written by Gurnah in 1996. It tells the story of a Zanzibar refugee who, after 20 years of diaspora in Britain, is able to return home, but then has to choose to return to Britain immediately. This article takes spatial migration and diaspora under post-colonialism as the background for studying refugees and applies cultural memory theory and identity theory to analyze the memory and identity construction issues in Admiring Silence. Finally, it attempts to explain the reasons for the memory and identity dilemma of diaspora groups from the perspectives of colonialism and racism in the suzerain country, as well as the failed acculturation of diaspora refugees themselves.