Abdulrazak Gurnah is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021. He is the author of ten novels: Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Dottie, Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award), Admiring Silence, By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), Desertion (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize) The Last Gift, Gravel Heart, and Afterlives, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Fiction 2021 and longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize. He was Professor of English at the University of Kent, and was a Man Booker Prize judge in 2016. He lives in Canterbury.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel that is so convincingly and hauntingly sad about the loss of home, the impossible longing to belong -- Michèle Roberts * Independent on Sunday * Abdulrazak Gurnah’s fifth novel, Admiring Silence, is his best to date … There is a wonderful sardonic eloquence to this unnamed narrator’s voice, and the playful humour and lack of self-pity which characterises his narrative is totally convincing * Financial Times * Through a twisting, many-layered narrative, Admiring Silence explores themes of race and betrayal with bitterly satirical insight * Sunday Times *