Showing results for "Abdulrazak Gurnah" in All Categories

Named a Washington Post Top 10 Fiction Book of 2025 In his first new novel since winning the 2021 Nobel Prize, a master storyteller captures a time of dizzying global change. At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania. Karim returns to his sleepy hometown...

From the Nobel Prize winner, a coming-of-age story that illuminates the harshness and beauty of an Africa on the brink of colonization Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, Paradise was characterized by the Nobel Prize committee as Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “breakthrough”...

Writing at the peak of his powers, Abdulrazak Gurnah gives us in Desertion a spellbinding novel of forbidden love and cultural upheaval, with consequences powerfully reverberating through three generations and across continents—from the heyday of the British empire to the aftermath of African...

Cuando los padres de Yusuf, de doce años, le dicen que vivirá con su tío Aziz durante una temporada, el chico se muestra entusiasmado. Pero lo que Yusuf no sabe es que su padre lo ha empeñado para saldar una deuda imposible de pagar, ni tampoco que Aziz no es pariente suyo, sino un rico y acaudalado comerciante con el que viajará por África central y las riberas del Congo en vísperas de la primera guerra mundial.

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022 A NEW YORKER “ESSENTIAL READ” A NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, THE NEW YORKER, BOOKPAGE, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS “Superb. . . . A celebration of a place and time when people held...

A masterwork by the 2021 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, in which two immigrants’ conflicting stories about their common homeland reveal the buried truths that drove them from it On a late November afternoon, Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport from his native Zanzibar. With him he has a...

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 drugstore in Exeter, before they settled into a quiet life with their children, Jamal and Hanna. Now, at the age of sixty-three, he suffers a collapse that renders him unable to speak about things he thought he would one day have to.

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 dishevelled introspection, Salim is confused and ashamed. His mother does not discuss the change.

Dear Catherine, he began. Here I sit, making a meal out of asking you to dinner. I don’t really know how to do it. To have cultural integrity, I would have to send my aunt to speak, discreetly, to your aunt, who would then speak to your mother, who would speak to my mother, who would speak to my father, who would speak to me and then approach your mother, who would then approach you. Demoralised by small persecutions and the squalor and poverty of his life, Daud takes refuge in his imagination.

Poverty and depravity wreak havoc on Hassan Omar’s family. Amid great hardship he decides to escape. The arrival of independence brings new upheavals as well as the betrayal of the promise of freedom. The new government, fearful of an exodus of its most able men, discourages young people from travelling abroad and refuses to release examination results. Deprived of a scholarship, Hassan travels to Nairobi to stay with a wealthy uncle, in the hope that he will release his mother’s rightful share of the family inheritance.

Una mañana de 1899, Martin Pearce, un escritor, viajero y orientalista inglés, exhausto después de escapar de una banda de ladrones, llega a una pequeña ciudad costera de África Oriental. Allí, en esa población en ruinas al borde de la vida civilizada, se enamora de Rehana, y comienza una apasionada historia de amor que unirá dos culturas y que reverberará a lo largo de tres generaciones y a través de los continentes, desde el África colonial hasta el Londres de los años sesenta.

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, the barriers come down in Zanzibar and he is able and compelled to go back.

Dottie Badoura Fatma Balfour finds solace amidst the squalor of her childhood by spinning warm tales of affection about her beautiful names. But she knows nothing of their origins, and little of her family history—or the abuse her ancestors suffered as they made their home in Britain. At seventeen, she takes on the burden of responsibility for her brother and sister and is obsessed with keeping the family together. However, as Sophie, lumpen yet voluptuous, drifts away, and the confused Hudson is absorbed into the world of crime, Dottie is forced to consider her own needs.

Zanzíbar, años noventa. Karim, Fauzia y Badar, tres muchachos que han crecido en entornos muy distintos, sueñan con las enormes posibilidades de su naciente país. Karim regresa a su tranquila ciudad natal con nuevos bríos y ambiciones tras sus estudios universitarios. Fauzia, apasionada por la escuela y con el sueño de ser maestra, ve en él una oportunidad para escapar de una educación asfixiante. Para Badar, en cambio, un sirviente sin estudios que nunca conoció a sus padres, parece que todas las puertas están cerradas.

Cuando todavía era un niño, Ilyas les fue arrebatado a sus padres por las tropas coloniales alemanas; tras años de ausencia y de batalla contra su propio pueblo, regresa a la ciudad de su infancia, donde sus padres han desaparecido y su hermana Afiya ha sido dada en adopción. Otro joven regresa al mismo tiempo: a Hamza no lo robaron para que combatiera, sino que lo vendieron. Con tan sólo sus ropas a la espalda, se limita a buscar trabajo y seguridad... y el amor de la hermosa Afiya.

Huyendo de la mítica isla de Zanzíbar, tierra de mercaderes de perfumes y especias acunada por los monzones, Saleh Omar, un comerciante de 65 años, llega al aeropuerto de Gatwick con una caja de caoba llena de incienso y un pasaporte falso. Para comunicarse con él, los servicios sociales recurren a Latif Mahmud, un poeta experto en suajili, profesor y exiliado voluntario que vive apaciblemente en un apartamento de Londres.

“We are all born with a divine fire in us. Our efforts should be to give wings to this fire”. President Kalam’s inspiring autobiography has touched the hearts of people all over the world. The book talks about the his humble beginnings in a small village in Tamil Nadu and his ascent to one of the most powerful positions in the country.

Quand ses parents annoncent à Yusuf, douze ans, qu'il va partir séjourner quelque temps chez son oncle Aziz, il est enchanté. Prendre le train, découvrir une grande ville, quel bonheur pour lui qui n'a jamais quitté son village de Tanzanie. Il ne comprend pas tout de suite que son père l'a vendu afin de rembourser une dette trop lourde - et qu'Aziz n'est pas son oncle, mais un riche marchand qui a besoin d'un esclave de plus chez lui.

Ilyas ist elf, als er aus Not sein bitterarmes Zuhause an der ostafrikanischen Küste verlässt und von einem Soldaten der deutschen Kolonialtruppen zwangsrekrutiert wird. Jahre später kehrt er in sein Dorf zurück, doch seine Eltern sind tot. Ilyas macht sich auf die Suche nach seiner kleinen Schwester Afiya, die bei Verwandten untergekommen ist, wo sie wie eine Sklavin gehalten wird und niemand ihre Talente sehen will. Auch ein anderer junger Mann kehrt nach Hause zurück.

Abdulrazak Gurnah erzählt klug, mit Wärme und Humor aus dem heutigen Leben junger tansanischer Weltbürger – gelesen von Richard Barenberg Tansania, heute. Drei junge Menschen wachsen hier auf: Karim, der nach seinem Studium mit Ehrgeiz und großen Ideen in seine verschlafene Heimatstadt Daressalam zurückkehrt. Fauzia, die in Karim nicht nur ihren geliebten Partner, sondern auch die Chance sieht, einer allzu behüteten Kindheit zu entkommen.