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Admiring Silence

By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021

Abdulrazak Gurnah author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:23rd Dec '21

Should be back in stock very soon

Admiring Silence cover

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