Admiring Silence

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 Nobel Prize in Literature 2021** 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. Review 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 -- Michele 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 '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