NP but banana meals

[Mark Kohut]

In* Afterlives, *our male protagonist is now in the German colonialists'
army in Africa,
the askari army, the German East Africa schutztruppe (purposely not
capitalized by Gurnah, I must believe)............
It is the turn of the 19th Century and the only food mentioned
so far for these soldiers in training is bananas & tripe.

Not really this, but other substantive themes in *Afterlives *reinforces my
very unscientific
belief that the Swedish Academy loves so many of Pynchon's deepest, most
originally done
themes in history and life, that he would have been given that Nobel if
only he would have shown up.
I try to read some new (to me) Nobelists and since *Against the Day*,
writers somehow indebted or with
similar necessary universal themes, keep popping up, as I skewingly read
them anyway. Ms. Jellinek, translator
of *Gravity's Rainbow* is one obvious one.

The major themes I am referring to here, in a very recent novel of
Gurnah's, written in (mostly) English, are the meanings
and effects of imperialism and colonialism, here by the Germans in Africa
ala P's Herero use. In a section
I've just read, the latent homosexuality of some German officers, in the
novel's example, the medical doctor,
who rubs our young hero's organ to start it enlarging, in order to declare
that "everything is in working order" who
is then said to, seemingly, not want to let go.

And the scene where our almost-femininely beautiful young black boy is
chosen to be the private servant of
an officer, teased by the other soldiers in training even before this event
as 'too pretty to be a soldier".

The above coupled with fierce homophobia, of course, all over the place.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/German_Schutztruppe_in_East_Africa/6E1xAAAACAAJ?hl=en