Abdulrazak Gurnah:

Well, I don't know about reckoning.

I think there is a need to pay attention to those historical responsibilities, to the things that happened, and not to be in denial about them. There is a defensiveness, I think, among certain parts of the political body in the U.K. that wants to say, no, no, it was OK, it was alright. Most of what was done in that period was OK.

There is, of course, another body of opinion that says, no, it wasn't. So it is right there in the center of the society and the culture now, I think, this idea of wanting to confront them to think about. Now, this is not only true of the U.K. It is also true of other colonizing — formerly colonizing empires, the French, or indeed the Germans.

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