Admiring Silence
By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:23rd Dec '21
Should be back in stock very soon
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
By the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature
'There is a wonderful sardonic eloquence to this unnamed narrator's voice' Financial Times
'I don't think I've ever read a novel that is so convincingly and hauntingly sad about the loss of home' Independent on Sunday
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He thinks, as he escapes from Zanzibar, that he will probably never return, and yet the dream of studying in England matters above that.
Things do not happen quite as he imagined – the school where he teaches is cramped and violent, he forgets how it feels to belong. But there is Emma, beautiful, rebellious Emma, who turns away from her white, middle-class roots to offer him love and bear him a child. And in return he spins stories of his home and keeps her a secret from his family.
Twenty years later, when the barriers at last come down in Zanzibar, he is able and compelled to go back. What he discovers there, in a story potent with truth, will change the entire vision of his life.
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 *
Abdulrazak Gurnah’s fifth novel, Admiring Silence, is his best to date … There is a wonderful sardonic eloquence to this unnamed narrator’s voice, and the playful humour and lack of self-pity which characterises his narrative is totally convincing * Financial Times *
Through a twisting, many-layered narrative, Admiring Silence explores themes of race and betrayal with bitterly satirical insight * Sunday Times *
ISBN: 9781526653451
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 198g
272 pages