Demoralised by small persecutions and the squalor and poverty of his life, Daud takes refuge in his imagination. He composes wry, sardonic letters hectoring friends and enemies, and invents a lurid colonial past for every old man he encounters. His greatest solace is cricket and the symbolic defeat of the empire at the hands of the mighty West Indies. Although subject to attacks of bitterness and remorse, his captivating sense of humour never deserts him as he struggles to come to terms with the horror of his past and the meaning of his pilgrimage to England.
‘Exile has given Gurnah a perspective on the “balance between things” that is astonishing, superb’
Observer
‘His intricate novels … reveal, with flashes of acerbic humour, the lingering ties that bind continents, and how competing versions of history collide’
Guardian
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Dottie
A searing tale of a young woman discovering her troubled family history and cultural past
Dottie Badoura Fatma Balfour finds solace amidst the squalor of her childhood by spinning warm tales of affection about her beautiful names. But she knows nothing of their origins, and little of her family history – or the abuse her ancestors suffered as they made their home in Britain.
At seventeen, she takes on the burden of responsibility for her brother and sister and is obsessed with keeping the family together. However, as Sophie, lumpen yet voluptuous, drifts away, and the confused Hudson is absorbed into the world of crime, Dottie is forced to consider her own needs. Building on her fragmented, tantalising memories, she begins to clear a path through life, gradually gathering the confidence to take risks, to forge friendships and to challenge the labels that have been forced upon her.
‘Gurnah etches with biting incisiveness the experiences of immigrants exposed to contempt, hostility or patronising indifference on their arrival in Britain’
Spectator
‘A captivating storyteller, with a voice both lyrical and mordant, and an oeuvre haunted by memory and loss’
Guardian
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Admiring Silence
Masterfully blending myth and reality, this is a dazzling tale of cultural identity and displacement
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.
‘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
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The Last Gift
Abbas has never told anyone about his past – before he was a sailor on the high seas, before he met his wife Maryam outside a Boots in Exeter, before they settled into a quiet life in Norwich with their children, Jamal and Hanna. Now, at the age of sixty-three, he suffers a collapse that renders him bedbound and unable to speak about things he thought he would one day have to.
Jamal and Hanna have grown up and gone out into the world. They were both born in England but cannot shake a sense of apartness. Hanna calls herself Anna now, and has just moved to a new city to be near her boyfriend. She feels the relationship is headed somewhere serious, but the words have not yet been spoken out loud. Jamal, the listener of the family, moves into a student house and is captivated by a young woman with dark-blue eyes and her own, complex story to tell. Abbas’s illness forces both children home, to the dark silences of their father and the fretful capability of their mother Maryam, who began life as a foundling and has never thought to find herself, until now.
‘Gurnah is a master storyteller ... A subtle and moving tale of a family coming to terms with itself: one to read at leisure and absorb at length’ Aminatta Forna, Financial Times
‘Gurnah writes with wonderful insight about family relationships and he folds in the layers of history with elegance and warmth’ The Times
‘A well-made novel about identity and, at a time of forbidding public rhetoric about immigration, Gurnah’s sensitive and sympathetic portrayal of his cast feels welcome’ Sunday Times
‘Stories and identities are rarely what they seem in The Last Gift, which is full of carefully guarded secrets. Beneath these multiple clandestine narratives, is a story replete with black humour and contemplative politics, told with great generosity’ Times Literary Supplement
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http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/abdulrazak-gurnah/
First published in Great Britain 2017
This electronic edition published in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
© Abdulrazak Gurnah, 2017
Abdulrazak Gurnah has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
‘Ramblin’ Rose’ Words and Music by Joe Sherman and Noel Sherman © 1962. Reproduced by permission of Erasmus Music Inc / Sony / ATV Tunes LLC, London WIF9LD.
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4088 8133 0
eISBN 978 1 4088 8131 6
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