ADMIRING SILENCE

249pp., paperback, Reprint, London, (1996) 2021

A young man leaves Zanzibar to study in England, thinking he'll never return.

"I don't think I've ever read a novel that is so convincingly and hauntingly sad about the loss of home." Michéle Roberts, Independent on Sunday

"Gurnah skilfully depicts the agony of a man caught between two cultures, each of which would disown him for his links to the other." New York Times

Abdulrazak Gurnah is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021. He is the author of the novels Memory of Departure, Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award), Dottie, Gravel Heart, The Last Gift, By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), Desertion (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize) and Afterlives (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.