**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021**Vehement, comic and shrewd, Abdulrazak Gurnah’s first novel is a “compelling” (New York Times) and unwavering contemplation of East African coastal life.Hassan Omar is a gifted young man, with a potentially bright future but a past marred by poverty. In the wake of a national uprising, and with a new government in place, though, he is denied a scholarship to a university abroad and deprived of the opportunity to study further. Instead, 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.In Nairobi, Hassan experiences the collision of past secrets and future hopes, and the compounding of fear and frustration, beauty and brutality. In his debut novel, Nobel Prize winning author Abdurlazak Gurnah creates a fierce tale of undeniable power.
LONGLISTED 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 lo
Rushdie is a major contemporary writer, who engages with some of the vital issues of our times: migrancy, postcolonialism, religious authoritarianism. This Companion offers a comprehensive introductio
The best-known novel by the great Kenyan writerSet in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952–1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested.
