New Releases by Abdulrazak Gurnah

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 _____________________ 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.

By the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature ''Demands to be read and reread, for its humour, generosity of spirit and clear-sighted vision'' Evening Standard ''Gurnah zooms in on individual acts of violence ... and unexpected acts of kindness'' Daily Telegraph ________________________ Demoralised by small persecutions and the squalor and poverty of his life, Daud takes refuge in his imagination. He composes wry, sardonic letters hectoring friends and enemies, and invents a lurid colonial past for every old man he encounters. His greatest solace is cricket and the symbolic defeat of the empire at the hands of the mighty West Indies. Although subject to attacks of bitterness and remorse, his captivating sense of humour never deserts him as he struggles to come to terms with the horror of his past and the meaning of his pilgrimage to England.

Près de la mer entremêle le destin de deux hommes réfugiés politique en Angleterre. Un grand texte sur l’exil et la dignité. Un soir de novembre 1994, Saleh Omar, soixante-cinq ans, débarque à l''aéroport de Londres, un faux passeport en poche. Dans son ancienne vie, sur l’île de Zanzibar, Saleh possédait une boutique, était marié et père de famille. Aujourd''hui, tenant contre lui un petit sac dans lequel se trouve son bien le plus précieux, une boîte en acajou contenant de l''encens, il est demandeur d’asile dans un pays qui ne veut pas de lui. À l’autre bout de la ville, Latif Mahmud attend impatiemment de rencontrer Saleh. Lorsque les deux hommes se retrouvent dans une ville côtière, une histoire se dévoile. Une histoire qui mêle amour et trahison, séduction et possession. À travers le destin mouvementé de deux hommes se dessine le combat d’un peuple qui tente désespérément de faire face à une succession d’événements tragiques. Un grand roman d’amour et d’exil, de déchirements mais aussi d’espoir.

From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, six powerful novels for fans of Zadie Smith, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Teju Cole. Included in this bundle, you''ll find: Memory of Departure Vehement, comic and shrewd, Abdulrazak Gurnah''s first novel is an unwavering contemplation of East African coastal life. Pilgrims Way An extraordinary depiction of the life of an immigrant as he struggles to come to terms with the horror of his past and the meaning of his life in England. Dottie A searing tale of a young woman discovering her troubled family history and cultural past. Admiring Silence A dazzling tale of cultural identity and displacement and the story of a man''s dual lives as a refugee from his native Zanzibar in England. The Last Gift An astounding meditation on family, self and the meaning of home that follows a father, and his two children, all haunted by their unspoken family history. Gravel Heart A powerful story of exile, migration, and betrayal, that evokes the immigrant experience with unsentimental precision and profound understanding.

Tolvårige Yusuf skickas av sina fattiga föräldrar till kusten för att bo hos sin farbror Aziz, en förmögen köpman. Snart går det upp för den oskuldsfulle Yusuf att köpmannen inte alls är Yusufs farbror: i själva verket har han sålts som skuldslav av sin far. Så börjar livets hårda skola för Yusuf. Genom Yusuf får vi uppleva ett Afrika som präglas av stamstrider, vidskeplighet, sjukdomar och barnslaveri, men drömmaren Yusuf får också en skymt av paradisets portar av eld och vatten. Paradiset är en mångbottnad, våldsam, vacker och märklig berättelse med ett poetiskt, skirt och avskalat språk, där perspektivet aldrig viker från den unga huvudpersonens sida. Den är fast förankrad i sin tid och sin miljö, en berättelse som ändå – eller just därför – är djupt allmängiltig.

Människorna i Den sista gåvan är offer för sina omständigheter, illa tilltygade av den globala migrationens tidvattensvågor, på flykt från sig själva. De är märkta av förlust, skam och rädsla. Med mästarhand skildrar Abdulrazak Gurnah deras rotlöshet, skuldkänslorna gentemot dem som har lämnats kvar, deras längtan efter tillhörighet och deras försök att uppfinna sig själva på nytt. Det här är berättelsen om den sköra gränsen mellan förlust och frihet, mellan gamla svek och nya lojaliteter. Den sista gåvan är Abdulrazak Gurnahs åttonde roman och hans andra på svenska. Här återvänder han till de teman han har utforskat i flera av sina tidigare romaner: exil och skuld.

With nationalism and the far right on the rise across Europe and North America, there has never been a more important moment to face up to what we, in Britain, are doing to those who seek sanctuary. Still the UK detains people indefinitely under immigration rules. Bail hearings go unrecorded, people are picked up without notice, individuals feel abandoned in detention centres with no way of knowing when they will be released. In Refugee Tales III we read the stories of people who have been through this process, many of whom have yet to see their cases resolved and who live in fear that at any moment they might be detained again. Poets, novelists and writers have once again collaborated with people who have experienced detention, their tales appearing alongside first-hand accounts by people who themselves have been detained. What we hear in these stories are the realities of the hostile environment, the human costs of a system that disregards rights, that denies freedoms and suspends lives. ‘We hear so many of the wrong words about refugees – ugly, limiting, unimaginative words – that it feels like a gift to find here so many of the right words which allow us to better understand the lives around us, and our own lives too.’ – Kamila Shamsie All profits go to the Gatwick Detainee Welfare Group and Kent Help for Refugees.

A powerful story of exile, migration, and betrayal, from the Booker Prize–shortlisted author of Paradise. Salim has always known that his father does not want him. Living with his parents and his adored Uncle Amir in a house full of secrets, he is a bookish child, a dreamer haunted by night terrors. It is the 1970s and Zanzibar is changing. Tourists arrive, the island''s white sands obscuring the memory of recent conflict--the longed-for independence from British colonialism swiftly followed by bloody revolution. When his father moves out, retreating into disheveled introspection, Salim is confused and ashamed. His mother does not discuss the change, nor does she explain her absences with a strange man; silence is layered on silence. When glamorous Uncle Amir, now a senior diplomat, offers Salim an escape, the lonely teenager travels to London for college. But nothing has prepared him for the biting cold and seething crowds of this hostile city. Struggling to find a foothold, and to understand the darkness at the heart of his family, he must face devastating truths about those closest to him--and about love, sex and power. Evoking the immigrant experience with unsentimental precision and profound understanding, Gravel Heart is a powerfully affecting story of isolation, identity, belonging, and betrayal, and Abdulrazak Gurnah''s most astonishing achievement.

One day, long before the troubles, he slipped away without saying a word to anyone and never went back. And then another day, forty three years later, he collapsed just inside the front door of his house in a small English town. It was late in the day when it happened, on his way home after work, but it was also late in the day altogether. He had left things for too long and there was no one to blame for it but himself. Abbas has never told anyone about his past - before he was a sailor on the high seas, before he met his wife Maryam outside a Boots in Exeter, before they settled into a quiet life in Norwich with their children, Jamal and Hanna. Now, at the age of sixty-three, he suffers a collapse that renders him bedbound and unable to speak about things he thought he would one day have to. Jamal and Hanna have grown up and gone out into the world. They were both born in England but cannot shake a sense of apartness. Hanna calls herself Anna now, and has just moved to a new city to be near her boyfriend. She feels the relationship is headed somewhere serious, but the words have not yet been spoken out loud. Jamal, the listener of the family, moves into a student house and is captivated by a young woman with dark-blue eyes and her own, complex story to tell. Abbas''s illness forces both children home, to the dark silences of their father and the fretful capability of their mother Maryam, who began life as a foundling and has never thought to find herself, until now.

Gestrandet im England der siebziger Jahre, heimgesucht von Erinnerungen an Sansibar und ohne Aussicht auf Heimkehr, mittellos und ausgegrenzt, sucht Daud Zuflucht im Reich der Phantasie, erfindet sich Geschichten und schreibt Gedankenbriefe an Freund und Feind. Mit Selbstironie und schwarzem Humor hält er sich seelisch über Wasser. Bis er eines Tages Catherine begegnet, der Schwesternschülerin, mit der er zum ersten Mal die Chance sieht, in der Fremde Heimat zu finden, und gleichzeitig erkennt, dass er sich den Schrecken der Vergangenheit und der Gegenwart stellen muss. Gurnahs Geschichte einer Liebe, getragen von der Hoffnung auf ein mögliches Miteinander aller Menschen, ungeachtet ihrer Hautfarbe, ist ein Plädoyer für die Toleranz und eine Abrechnung mit dem alltäglichen Rassismus, - ernst, doch ohne Bitterkeit, von hintersinnigem Humor und feiner Ironie.

Autobiografisch relaas van de strijd van een arme Keniase jongen om het bestaan.