Admiring Silence
By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
Narrated by: Damian Lynch
Bloomsbury presents Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah, read by Damian Lynch.
By the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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
Literature & Fiction Literary Fiction
"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)
"Through a twisting, many-layered narrative, Admiring Silence explores themes of race and betrayal with bitterly satirical insight." (Sunday Times)
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What listeners say about Admiring Silence
K.R.Olsen
Enthralling
I have always felt that words could never fully express the chaos, pain and joys of lived experience. But in this book they do. A remarkable book.