Journal of Travel Literature Studies
JTLS, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2026, pp. 82-97.
Print ISSN: 3135-6788; Online ISSN: 3135-6796
Journal homepage: https://www.tlsjournal.com
DOI： https://doi.org/10.64058/JTLS.26.1.05
Thing Narrative and the Refugee Theme in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea[1]
Feng Zhang and Xinwei Tang
Abstract: Throughout Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea, a constellation of materially resonant objects recurs with insistent symbolic weight—the ud-al-qamari, the ebony table, the map, the house, articles of food and clothing, the telephone, among others. To examine these objects through the lens of new materialism is to uncover the manifold operations of thing-narrative within the text. Such an approach accomplishes three critical interventions. First, it foregrounds the agency of things and the materiality of human subjects, thereby dismantling the conventional binary opposition between persons and objects. Second, the actor-network formed by the entanglement of human and nonhuman entities not only propels the novel’s narrative momentum but also deepens the complexity of characterization. Finally, things assume an indispensable role in the constitution of refugee identity: they function as vessels of affective memory and as instruments of cross-cultural negotiation. Attending to the thing-narrative in By the Sea thus sharpens our understanding of the novel’s central preoccupations—the reciprocally constitutive relation between persons and their material world, and the lived textures of the refugee experience.
Keywords: By the Sea; thing narrative; new materialism; Actor-Network; refugee theme
Authors Biographies: Feng Zhang (first and corresponding author), PhD, is an associate professor at School of English and International Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University, China. He has been a Visiting Scholar at University of Cambridge (2015–2016). His research focuses on postcolonial and diasporic literature in English. He has published three books and approximately 30 papers in major Chinese journals on foreign literature studies. His latest publications include A Study of Contemporary British Diasporic Fiction (2018), “Memory, Language, Heterogeneity, and Locality in Postcolonial Literature: A Review of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Thought on Writing and Criticism” (2022), and “The Multiple Narrative Strategies and Thematic Implications in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Admiring Silence” (2022). Email: zhangfeng@bfsu.edu.cn.
Xinwei Tang (second author) is a lecturer at Department of Public Education, Liaoning Institute of Education, China. Her research focuses on diasporic literature in English.
Received: 12 Feb 2026 / Revised: 26 Mar 2026 / Accepted: 2 May 2026 / Published online: 30 May 2026 / Print published: 30 Sep 2026.
