Description: A dazzling tale of cultural identity and displacement, this is the story of a man's escape from his native Zanzibar to England to build a new life
Brief description: Abdulrazak Gurnah is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021. He is the author of ten novels: Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Dottie, Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award), Admiring Silence, By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), Desertion (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize) The Last Gift, Gravel Heart, and Afterlives, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Fiction 2021 and longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize. He was Professor of English at the University of Kent, and was a Man Booker Prize judge in 2016. He lives in Canterbury.
Review Quotes:
"Corrosively funny and relentless... Gurnah skillfully depicts the agony of a man caught between two cultures, each of which would disown him for his links to the other." --The New York Times
"Through a twisting, many-layered narrative, Admiring Silence explores themes of race and betrayal with bitterly satirical insight" --Sunday Times "I don't think I've ever read a novel that is so convincingly and hauntingly sad about the loss of home, the impossible longing to belong." --Michèle Roberts, Independent on Sunday