Admiring Silence - by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Paperback)

About the Book

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

Book Synopsis

**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021**

A "corrosively funny and relentless" (The New York Times) tale of cultural identity and displacement, Admiring Silence is the story of a man's dual lives as a refugee from his native Zanzibar in England.

The unnamed narrator of this dazzling novel escapes from Zanzibar to England knowing that he will probably never return. In his new country, things are not quite as he imagined - the school where he teaches is cramped and violent, and he quickly forgets how it feels to belong.

But when he meets a beautiful, rebellious woman named Emma, and when Emma, turns away from her white, middle-class roots to offer him love and bear him a child, the narrator chooses to hide his past from his new family and his present circumstance from his family back in Zanzibar.

Twenty years later, when the barriers at last come down in Zanzibar, he is compelled to go back. What he discovers there, in a story potent with truth, will change the entire vision of his life.

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

About the Author

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.