Gravel Heart

By: Abdulrazak Gurnah

Narrated by: Damian Lynch

Bloomsbury presents Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah, read by Damian Lynch.

From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, a powerful story of exile, migration, and betrayal.

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.©2017 Abdulrazak Gurnah ‘Ramblin’ Rose’ Words and Music by Joe Sherman and Noel Sherman © 1962. Reproduced by permission of Erasmus Music Inc / Sony / ATV Tunes LLC,London W1F 9LD. (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Don’t tire

Stay with this beautifully written story . Leave it aside if you must but return to its exquisite layers of compassion and insights . Bravo

So enjoyed this!

This transported me, delighted and inspired me. It was beautifully performed and makes me want to go read more of this author’s work. Asante!