Admiring Silence
By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021
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Admiring Silence
Narrated by:
Damian Lynch
Buy Now for £12.96
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Narrated by:
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Damian Lynch
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.©1996 Abdulrazak Gurnah (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Critic reviews
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)
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
Through a twisting, many-layered narrative, Admiring Silence explores themes of race and betrayal with bitterly satirical insight
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