The Last Gift

By: Abdulrazak Gurnah

Narrated by: Ali Zayn

Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Bloomsbury presents The Last Gift by Abdulrazak Gurnah, read by Ali Zayn.

By the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Abbas has never told anyone about his past; about what happened 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.

©2011 Abdulrazak Gurnah (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Critic reviews

"Gurnah is a master storyteller." (Financial Times)

"A well-made novel about identity and, at a time of forbidding public rhetoric about immigration, Gurnah's sensitive and sympathetic portrayal of his cast feels welcome." (Sunday Times)