Gurnah, Abdulrazak – The Bell Bookshop

Theft

Emma — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The new novel from the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature – ‘a maestro’ (Guardian). A captivating story of the intertwined lives of three young people coming-of-age in postcolonial East Africa

Selected as a book to look out for in 2025 by the Guardian, Observer, Irish Times and BBC

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What are we given, and what do we have to take for ourselves?

It is the 1990s. Growing up in Zanzibar, three very different young people – Karim, Fauzia and Badar – are coming of age, and dreaming of great possibilities in their young nation. But for Badar, an uneducated servant boy who has never known his parents, it seems as if all doors are closed.

Brought into a lowly position in a great house in Dar es Salaam, Badar finds the first true home of his life – and the friendship of Karim, the young man of the house. Even when a shattering false accusation sees Badar sent away, Karim and Fauzia refuse to turn away from their friend.

But as the three of them take their first steps in love, infatuation, work and parenthood, their bond is tested – and Karim is tempted into a betrayal that will change all of their lives forever.

Map Reading

Emma — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

‘One of the world’s most prominent postcolonial writers ? He has consistently and with great compassion penetrated the effects of colonialism and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals’ Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel CommitteeDelivered in London on 7 December 2021, ‘Writing’ is the lecture of the Nobel Laureate in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah. Collected here with three further essays, it explores his coming-of-age, his early experiences in 1960s Britain, the narratives of oceans, his lifelong love affair with reading, and the power of writing to subvert the stories that have been handed to us. Generous, funny and wise, this collection is the perfect introduction to the storyteller described as ‘one of Africa’s most important living writers’; whose work, now spanning four decades, continues to spin wonder and magic while offering penetrating insight into exile, migration and homecoming. ‘In book after book, he guides us through seismic historic moments and devastating societal ruptures while gently outlining what it is that keeps those families, friendships and loving spaces intact’ Maaza Mengiste‘A wondrous writer’ Philippe Sands

Admiring Silence

Emma — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Afterlives

Emma — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

BY THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 2021SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2021LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE 2021‘Riveting and heartbreaking … A compelling novel, one that gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure’ Maaza Mengiste, Guardian‘A brilliant and important book for our times, by a wondrous writer’ Philippe Sands, New Statesman, Books of the YearWhile he was still a little boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents by the German colonial troops. After years away, fighting in a war against his own people, he returns to his village to find his parents gone, and his sister Afiya given away.Another young man returns at the same time. Hamza was not stolen for the war, but sold into it; he has grown up at the right hand of an officer whose protection has marked him life. With nothing but the clothes on his back, he seeks only work and security – and the love of the beautiful Afiya. As fate knots these young people together, as they live and work and fall in love, the shadow of a new war on another continent lengthens and darkens, ready to snatch them up and carry them away?‘One of the world’s most prominent postcolonial writers ? He has consistently and with great compassion penetrated the effects of colonialism in East Africa and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals’ Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee ‘In book after book, he guides us through seismic historic moments and devastating societal ruptures while gently outlining what it is that keeps those families, friendships and loving spaces intact, if not fully whole’ Maaza Mengiste‘Rarely in a lifetime can you open a book and find that reading it encapsulates the enchanting qualities of a love affair … One scarcely dares breathe while reading it for fear of breaking the enchantment’ The Times

Paradise

Emma — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Born in East Africa, Yusuf has few qualms about the journey he is to make. It never occurs to him to ask why he is accompanying Uncle Aziz or why the trip has been organised so suddenly, and he does not think to ask when he will be returning. But the truth is that his ‘uncle’ is a rich and powerful merchant and Yusuf has been pawned to him to pay his father’s debts. Paradiseis a rich tapestry of myth, dreams and Biblical and Koranic tradition, the story of a young boy’s coming of age against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.