One day, long before the troubles, he slipped away without saying a word to anyone and never went back. And then another day, forty three years later, he collapsed just inside the front door of his house in a small English town. It was late in the day when it happened, on his way home after work, but it was also late in the day altogether. He had left things for too long and there was no one to blame for it but himself. 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 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.
'Gurnah is a master storyteller ... A subtle and moving tale of a family coming to terms with itself: one to read at leisure and absorb at length' Aminatta Forna, Financial Times 'Gurnah writes with wonderful insight about family relationships and he folds in the layers of history with elegance and warmth' The 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 'Stories and identities are rarely what they seem in The Last Gift, which is full of carefully guarded secrets. Beneath these multiple clandestine narratives, is a story replete with black humour and contemplative politics, told with great generosity' Times Literary Supplement
Title: The Last Gift
Subtitle:
Contributors:
By (author)
Abdulrazak Gurnah
ISBN 13: 9781408821855
ISBN 10: 1408821850
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publication Date: 1/06/2012
Place of Publication:
London,
United Kingdom
Edition:
BIC Subjects:
Modern fiction
NBS Classification: General & Literary Fiction
Dewey Classification:
823.92
(DC23)
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Height: 198mm
Width: 129mm