طريق الحجاج

by Abdulrazak Gurnah, شريف بقنه (ترجمة)

**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021**

A ”wonderful” (Maaza Mengiste) depiction of the life of an immigrant as he struggles to come to terms with the horror of his past and the meaning of his life in England.

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.

Daud has immigrated to England in the wake of political turmoil in his native Tanzania. For years, he has tried to hide his past. But when he meets Catherine, he is determined to recount for her the stories of his tragic upbringing, his flight to England, and the racism in his new homeland.

Structured as a pilgrimage, one which leads Daud deep into the pain and beauty of the past and forward into a new understanding of his life in exile, Pilgrims Way is a captivating, lyrical story about identity, memory, and immigration.

Genres: Fiction, Africa, Novels, Nobel Prize, Literary Fiction, British Literature, 20th Century

Paperback

First published June 2, 1988

About the author

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948 in Zanzibar and lives in England, where he teaches at the University of Kent. The most famous of his novels are Paradise, shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea, longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents".

Reviews

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Face the facts, boy. She’s got herself a young, attractive doctor who’s an Englishman son of an Englishman. He’s rich. And his daddy’s rich. In a couple of weeks’ time they go driving across France. Next year they go flying to Florence. She couldn’t go wrong even if he turns out to be a wife-beater as well. Now look the other way and see what she’s got as competition against that. Say it how you will, it comes to the same thing. A foreigner with a whole chapter and verse of dreadful scars. A sleazy customer, past his best, paint running off him. He lives in a mouldy slum and doesn’t have a penny. His only friends are a couple of idiots who hate each other. For a living he cleans floors in a hospital, and could just as easily have been cleaning car park toilets. Even his father hates him! So face the facts and prepare yourself to take this like a man instead of blubbering all over the place like you ain’t got no black pride.

The 2nd novel by the 2021 Nobel Prize Literature winner

From the Nobel Citation

In the second work, Pilgrims Way from 1988, Gurnah explores the multifaceted reality of life in exile. The protagonist, Daud, is confronted with the racist climate of his new homeland, England. After having tried to hide his past, love for a woman entices Daud to tell his story. He can then recount what happened in his tragic upbringing and the traumatic memories of the political turmoil in Tanzania that forced him into flight. The novel ends with Daud’s visit to Canterbury cathedral where he meditates on the parallels between the Christian pilgrims who visited the place in past times and his own journey to England. He had previously defiantly resisted everything the former colonial power had exulted over, but suddenly, beauty was attainable. The novel shapes into a secular version of a classic pilgrimage, using historical and literary antecedents as interlocutors in issues of identity, memory and kinship

This is the first of Gurnah’s novels to really address his recurrrent and autobiographical theme and subject matter: of exile and asylum and of a male character whose life is split between his birth country of Zanzibar and his adopted one of England without really feeling like belonging to either. This was later explored in “Admiring Silence”, “By the Sea”, “The Last Gift” and “Gravel Heart” (so in total across five of his ten novels).

And I think this is probably the best justification for reading this book – as a way to see the nascent development of a Nobel winning oeuvre; because purely on its merits I found this a very uneven book with only sporadic elements of individual literary merit.

The book is set in Canterbury in 1976 – neither location nor year mentioned but both unmistakable from the first few pages: the first by the references to the Cathedral, Marlowe and so on; the second from the frequent cricket references – in particular to the 1975-6 West Indian thrashing in Australia and the same teams 1976 series in England.

The choice of cricket is important to the novel and Gurnah’s writing. Gurnah himself is often quoted as justifying his writing in English by saying that the English language, like cricket, is a British invention which now belongs to everyone. And the 1976 England-West Indies series was the famous Tony Grieg “make them grovel” series – when Michael Holding (now 45 years later hugely respected for his 2020 intervention in the debate about racism in sport and author in 2021 of the book “Why We Kneel, How We Rise”) ripped England to shreds – something openly celebrated by the book’s narrator Daud (even to the extent of boring his white, English girlfriend Catherine who has no interest in cricket altogether).

Daud is working as a hospital porter (which of course famously also did Gurnah) with aspirations to study literature at the University – having (we learn in some limited detail) failed in some earlier studies which seems to have lead to a breech with his father (father/son breeches being a classical Gurnah trope).

The world in which he is based – 1976 England – is one where both racism in all forms (casual and pervasive use of inflammatory terms and racial stereotypes – even by close acquaintances and colleagues, and open prejudice, insulting language and often violence by strangers) is pervasive. Daud though is also provocative in his views of the English as a race of greedy, war-hungry colonisers and enjoys remarking on the apparent contrast between the view of the home country and virtues of their race that the English project abroad and the seeming inadequacies of both that he sees in the streets and people around him).

Some of those views are expressed in the imaginary letters he addresses in his mind to those around him or in his dreams (one of the many areas in which this novel anticipates Gurnah’s writing is in this early view of the letters and dreams on which his novels rely – probably in my view over-rely).

But sometimes the views are expressed verbally and confrontationally – this being a typical example of the start of such an exchange (which deteriorates further from here into more obscene exchanges).

‘I wish she’d just get on with it,’ growled a beefy, balding man in blue overalls, grinning to acknowledge the deliberate ambiguity of his exhortation. Daud looked at him with interest. Could this man have led charges across strange and blood-stained terrains, cut railway tracks into mountain-sides and brought order to warring peoples? The man caught Daud’s glance and gave him the imperial smile. ‘I wouldn’t let her talk to me like that if I were you,’ he said, grinning and looking at faces in the queue to signal that this was a send-up. ‘I bet if you were back in the jungle, you’d have just chucked her in a pot, wouldn’t you?’ ‘What?’ he asked, momentarily taken aback by this brazen assault. ‘Ha ha, I was only pulling your leg, mate,’ the grinning man said, pretending to hush down the titters of the rest of the queue. ‘Pulling my leg?’ Daud said. ‘You ignorant fat man!

This does not make for particularly enlightening reading and was for me exacerbated by a the three way interaction between Daud and (in particular) two of his friends – Lloyd (from a white traditional upper-middle class, ex-colonial English family of the type which often populate Gurnah’s novels) and Carter (from Sierra Leone) which normally descends quickly into racial name calling and stereotyping which tends to frequently fall either side of the tightrope between banter and abuse.

In contrast to many of Gurnah’s later novels there is limited detail on Daud’s life in Zanzibar – when it does come though (told in a series of italics which start in his thoughts as letter to Catherine but which are later shared with her verbally, they start with a rather odd letter and what seemed to me some rather wordy and out-of-place reminiscences about the loss of a late teenage friend and an ill fated boat trip but which then come to life with a shocking set of events on the same night – which turns out to be the night of the Zanzibar revolution.

Daud’s interaction with Catherine is perhaps the book’s start – she provokes and challenges him on his unwillingness to tell stories, on the life he seems to have accepted and on his status as victim; while he in turn pushes back on her assumptions and what we would now think of as her white-privilege, while also reflecting on some of the truth in what she says

She was nothing to him. He thought that with a mental swagger. She would understand nothing of this. Why did she ask about things she could not possibly understand? Forcing him to talk about events he would rather forget. He did not even talk to others like himself about this . . . others who had also come to conquer the world and ended up as car park attendants and accounts clerks. But still she waited, expectant and serious, waiting for him to bare his soul. She wanted to help him, he could see that. Save him from himself. She wanted him to prove to her that he was not just wallowing, that he had cause and reason to wander around the countryside looking tragic and interesting.

Later – even after (or perhaps because of) a vicious racist attack Daud is lead to his final revelation as explained in the Nobel Citation and perhaps the first genuinely positive moment in what was for me a an often unenjoyable if interesting novel.

‘Wait,’ he begged. ‘Let me finish. What links all these pilgrims is the same desire to break out of their limitations, to go beyond what they know . . . to change their lives.’

[divayorgun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hacılar Yolu, göçmenliğin sadece bir yer değiştirme değil, aynı zamanda ruhsal bir sınav olduğunu çok etkileyici bir şekilde anlatıyor. Daud’un yabancı bir ülkede yaşadığı yalnızlık, dışlanma ve kimliğini yeniden inşa etme çabası bana çok tanıdık geldi; insanın aidiyet duygusunun ne kadar kırılgan olabileceğini düşündürdü. Gurnah’ın dili kimi zaman ağır ama bu yoğunluk aslında romanın atmosferini daha gerçek kılıyor. Okurken kendimi kahramanın yalnız yürüyüşlerinde yanındaymış gibi hissettim. Kitap bana, gerçek yolculuğun dışarıya değil, içe doğru yapılan bir yolculuk olduğunu hatırlattı. Göç, kimlik ve yabancılık temalarına ilgi duyanlar için çok özel bir eser.

[Rahul Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book on a whim last week and put it lower in a pile of unread books on my table. As the year was drawing to a close, I pulled it out and decided to read a chapter and see if this is what I'd want my first read of 2025 to be. Well, the fact that I have finished it already expresses the fact that I loved it. When I read the first chapter, I knew I wanted to keep reading it. I wanted to follow this story of a young man in the 1970s England who's trying to find a place for himself. He has left his university degree midway, taken to a job as a cleaner at a hospital, stopped speaking to his parents who are back in Tanzania waiting for their son to make them proud, and is slowly falling for an English colleague. Written in 1988, this book read like one Colm Tóibín must have read to be inspired to write Brooklyn (2009). Like Eilis Lacey, we follow Daud make his way through a job he despises, constantly think of home and be homesick in his unwelcoming flat, remember the friends and family he's left behind, be told of his outsider identity and the terrible immigrant status, and get caught in throes of passionate dilemmas. There are differences between the two, of course, given Daud is a Black, Muslim man in a white space. Sometimes the violence he encounters are unbearable to read because you begin to see and feel like Daud. He is a shy man. One who overthinks, who can see the world noting the worst in him even when they are trying to be nice. But he is also a man who knows that he deserves love because he is capable of giving that, who knows that he has certain ambitions and they may remain at a pause while he makes love to his charming girl. I loved this book to bits. Gurnah writes with wit, humour and intelligence. His sentences are short, intense and wrap you in its fold from the first page itself. His sensitivity is revealing. Oh, I have already found one of my best books of the year. My love for Gurnah is sealed further with this. I encourage all of you to read this. I promise you, you will walk out of this novel feeling sad and happy for this beautifully crafted man: Daud.

[David C Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent; affecting and exceedingly well written. Daud, an Arab/Muslim/African emigrant from Tanzania to England (a pilgrim in the promised land: its set in Canterbury) in the 1970s works as a hospital orderly and tries to be both present and invisible at the same time in modern (racist) Britain. It’s very good - and also, amazingly, very funny - about colonialism and racism, including the fear inducing daily indignities inflicted on Daud as he just tries to make a life in exile. If Daud can’t make a home in England, he also can’t go home to post independence Tanzania either. He’s figuratively at sea as he actually was at a pivotal moment in his story. Also a love story that may be redemptive. . .

Cricketing note: the game as a battleground between colonizer and colonized began as soon as the English took it overseas. In 1976 the English captain Tony Greig, born in South Africa, said he would make the visiting West Indies “grovel.” It’s interesting that Daud gives Grieg grudging respect for performing well in a losing cause exemplifying a key idea in CLR James’ classic book on cricket and nationalism, Beyond a Boundary: that there was value in the game itself and that value could be transcendent and transformative - like Canterbury’s cathedral.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

An early novel by Gurnah, Pilgrims Way, like his later book The Last Gift, is about a man from Zanzibar living in England with a hidden tragic past in his home country. Daud came as a student, but was unsuccessful and now is working as an orderly in a hospital; as he describes it, as a cleaner. The writing at the beginning seems a bit awkward, but is better after the first chapter. The novel opens with him in a pub thinking about the racist ways he has been treated since his arrival, and this is a major theme throughout the book; the tone is a bit angrier than in the later novel, but the most extreme expressions are on the part of his friend Karta who despises everything about England and the English. After a while the plot becomes mostly about Daud's relationship with his English girlfriend Catherine, a nurse at the hospital where he works.

[Mareanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tweede boek dat ik van Gurnah lees. Thema vergelijkbaar, verhaal iets ongepolijster. Knap hoe Gurnah thema pelgrim gebruikt om niet alleen te laten zien hoe hard op een vreemdeling wordt gereageerd maar ook hoe diep de pelgrim het trauma van zijn vlucht verbergt. Goed opgebouwd verhaal met mooie ontknoping

[Chelsea Mervenne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book really interesting and quite unlike others I've read, and I enjoyed the author's writing style. You get to know the the main character, a an immigrant from Tanzania named Daud, largely through hypothetical letters he writes in his head in response to things that happen to him. He struggles to exist in 1980's England where he faces both blatant and "benevolent" racism. Throughout the book, you watch him grapple with competing narratives: 1.) "One can find a better life and opportunities in Europe" and 2.) "Europe's legacy of imperialism/colonization in Africa created the conditions forcing Africans to leave in search of a better life in Europe." He's a complexly written character, and the fact that he wasn't particularly likable seemed like an honest and necessary part of the story. Among all of Daud's struggles, how could he possibly be anything other than jaded or (annoyingly) pessimistic? Most of us in his situation would also fail to be a picture of smiling resilience, and I believe that's the point.

This is definitely not a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" narrative, nor is it a "the struggle is the identity" narrative. It reads as a more honest account of how one might grapple with with the circumstances in which Daud (like many immigrants) finds himself, and the impact it can have on one's relationships, identity, and state of mind.

[christy whiddon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sordid awfulness

Literally one of the worst books I've ever read- had to force myself to finish it. Patronizing and extremely discriminatory. Another example of the Nobel price committee in literature NOT awarding the prize for actual literature or good story telling.

[Bukola Akinyemi · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book we meet Daud, an African immigrant working as a hospital porter in England.

While he has escaped the poverty of his old life, he faces racism, discrimination and another form poverty.

Daud maintains a small friendship group comprising of Lloyd, a young man from a white upper-middle class family and Karta, a fellow African immigrant who is always on the edge around white people and quick to call out racism.

He meets and falls for Catherine, a young British nurse.

The writing is infused with Daud’s journaling and letter writing as he comes to terms with the horrors he has left behind and the life he is living in England.

Overall, this is an ok read. Not exactly a page turner.

[Najia · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

It is nice enough. Good intermingling of ideas, politics, history, racism, romance etc. However, the profundity of ideas you would expect from a Nobel winner are sorely missing. An attempt had been made in that direction, but execution is not enough unfortunately.

[Kimberly · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's always difficult for me to truly get into a book if I don't find any of the characters redeemable. We meet Daud, Catherine, Karta, and Lloyd but there is still so much we don't know about them - How old are they? What is happening in the UK at this time? The characters felt flawed with no clear sense of a full story arch to feel understood to me. Also, the book spends a lot of time in Daud's head with his musings and internal banter but so much of this is clouding what's real from his perception that it gets confusing.

I preferred Gravel Heart to this novel.

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pilgrims Way was the second book by Gurnah I have read. It is also the second novel he has published (1988). The first book I read was Gravel Heart from 2017. These two books have much in common and can be considered as different chapters of the same story. In both books a young boy leaves/has left Zanzibar/Tanzania for the U.K., where he meets a quite hostile society and fails in his academic aspirations and even in finding his place in the English society. Pilgrims Way was even harsher in its depiction of the omnipresent racism in the English society and its hostility towards immigrants, especially those of colour. Maybe I am over-optimistic if I think that things would in thirty or forty years (I assume that the events of the book take place in the seventies) have become so much better for people of colour and immigrants in general in the U.K. Anyway, Gurnah portrays very well the young Daud and his endeavours in both his personal life and his struggle for his daily bread. The reader sympathises strongly with him, and you can feel his misfortune and hardship in your guts…. and rejoice with him in those moments when the “sun occasionally shines on him”. The ending of the book was bit of a disappointment to me. What really did happen in the end? I experienced it as a disillusion.

Speaking of racism, Gurnah presents here a subtle and versatile picture of racism with all its dimensions. Racism is obviously more complex than we tend to think, and it does not occur only on the white/black axis. It occurs on both sides as well as between many other groups of people. Daud’s black friend Karta is probably a cognizant individual, but you cannot approve of all his acts. You could call even him a racist. Dislike of a certain individual does not justify rude behaviour, not to mention violence.

The author displays here a perfect eye for detail. I just must mention Daud’s visit to his white friend’s parents together with his white girlfriend. The reader feels like he would sit in the same living room listening to the discussion and feeling embarrassed and ashamed on behalf of the English.

This story is much about being a stranger in a strange country, feeling like an alien or even extra-terrestrial. In Daud’s/Gurnah’s words: “The community you live in carries on in its complicated way, and it is entirely indifferent to you. It requires nothing from you , and in return you are a complete irrelevance to it. You are free. But you’re also without function. Do what you like, it makes no difference.”

[Renee Seinfeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

A raw, visceral novel about a black African immigrant living in Canterbury, England. Daud, an orderly working at a hospital, whose job it is to clean operating rooms after surgery, struggles with loneliness being the constant victim of both invisibility and blatant hostility by those who surround him. He only has two flawed friends. Karta, a gregarious womanizing black man from west Africa and Lloyd, a white working class man who is oblivious of his own callous racism.

One day at work, Daud meets Catherine, a white nursing student who becomes a buoy of hope and love. This novel is a slow burning tragedy filled with startling realities, sharp humor and a portrayal of the viciousness of colonialism and it’s generational scars.

Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in 2021 for fiction.

[Debbie Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Abdulrazak Gurnah allows his beautifully crafted, complex characters to show their stories. In this story, Daud from Tanzania, works in a demeaning, boring job as an orderly in an operating theatre in London. He tries to fit into British life but meets endless prejudice. There is no escape. Nostalgia fizzles into the reality of his homeland, which was less than ideal. Daud becomes obsessed with the West Indian cricket team because of the team's ability to embarass England and win over colonialism -- something he will never be able to accomplish. I found this to be a haunting book that captures loneliness and the challenges of immigration.

[Sumit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly brutal illustration of what it means to be an immigrant, and specifically how impossible it can feel to distinguish between real and perceived bias from the dominant culture. The shadow of that doubt pervades Daud's every thought and every decision, and when others dismiss it as paranoia, more often than not they come to understand the very real basis of his fears.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Gurnah's second novel, and the seventh of his novels that I have read. I found this novel to be (thus far) the one reflecting the bitterness, anger and isolation of Africans who have come to England. Gurnah writes, I assume, from his experience and the experiences of fellow travelers--he comes from Zanzibar, where many of his main characters come from.

This novel takes place in England, and while the main character, Daud, tells some stories from his past, most of the novel is about his interactions with the nurses, doctors and others at the hospital where he works as an orderly (given the most demeaning tasks) and his relationship with a white nurse, Catherin, his fellow African friend Karta and a well-meaning but in the end loutish Englishman named Lloyd.

The novel struck me as the most raw, real and deepest that Gurnah has written, giving us insight into the feelings of those who feel like strangers in a strange land, who can't even get a smile out of a neighbor, who are treated as menial and called names. The audioversion of the book even "bleeped out" several of the words in some of the name-calling scenes. It's not a pleasant novel to read, though the final chapter and final pages are quite incisive.

[Rasmus Tillander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rasismia ja rakkautta Englannissa.

Pilgrims Way kertoo nuoresta tansaniasta Lontooseen muuttaneesta Daudista, joka joutuu lahjakkuudestaan huolimatta työskentelemään sairaala-apulaisena. Näin joutui tekemään myös Gurnah, joten hän osaa kyllä kuvata millaista on olla itä-afrikkalainen maahanmuuttaja Englannissa 1970-luvulla.

Kirjan keskeisin teema on Daudin kokema rasismi ja Gurnah sitoo sen tarinaan oivasti: vaikka yhteiskunta on todella rasistinen ja sitä kuvataan realistisesti, niin Daudin pistävä ivallisuus pitää lukukokemuksen suhteellisen kepeänä. Tämä kepeys teki ainakin itselleni tästä tarinasta jotenkin vielä koskettavamman, ei vain kurjuuden kuvausta vaan inhimillistämistä. Ja siis Gurnah myös kirjoittaa hahmojensa suuhun aidosti hauskaa kommentaaria. Rasismin ohella teoksessa käsitellään osuvasti maskuliinisuutta erityisesti Daudin valkoisen rakkausintressi Catherinen ja machoilevan länsi-afrikkalais-ystävä Kartan kautta.

Tässä oli sellaista tiettyä inhimillistä lämpöä, joka tuo mieleen Steinbeckin. Ja se on kova saavutus se. Jos siis bränikkä nobelisti kiinnostaa niin Pilgrims Wayta voi kyllä suositella!

[Uttara]

Horrifying that this 35 year old novel is so relevant amidst the racist and islamophobic riots. Quite telling of the country's history of 'race relations', especially in terms of how structural (and historic) injustice is perpetuated through everyday dehumanisation.

I enjoyed the glimpses of cricket references, but I wish there was more especially on how the game allowed for a shared hope, especially under Clive Lloyd's captaincy.

As Trinidad and Tobago Newsday's Debbie Jacob articulates in her review, Gurnah is very good at showing, not telling. Which for a large part is liberating to explore, because the foundational politics of the 'showing' is very clear. Where it got uncomfortable was with the gender politics--was it hyper self awareness or in doing so, does it end up indulging the male gaze?

Unnecessary sidenote: I wonder if Anuk Arudpragasam's Krishan (from A Passage North) was inspired by Gurnah's Daud.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and highly readable rendering of, principally, an African immigrant's life in England (Canterbury, as the title might suggest) in 1976, recreated with accurate period detail (I checked the account of the West Indies triumphant cricket tour of England, which gives our hero Daud so much pleasure). There is an undercurrent, or sometimes just a current, of violence, mostly racist violence, throughout, though somehow also love, of complicated kinds. Daud is all too aware of the everyday violence; besides being always a potential target himself, he also sees every old man as someone who probably killed non-white people in colonial wars. Catherine, a white Englishwoman, does not, but she starts to see what he's up against -- and faces the threat of violence herself. In amongst this grimness, though, does sometimes arise the possibility of change.

[Naeem · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one seemed claustrophobic, dark, and menacing relative to his novel Afterlives which is set in German colonized East Africa. Perhaps Gurnah means this mood to represent England, which is the setting.

I take the theme here to be about "encounter" between immigrants and locals and specifically sexual encounters overladen with racism and orientalist tropes. These don't go as I expected. So surprises here for sure.

I might say that this can be seen as a good pairing with Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Selih and The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer. Very different are the three novels in tone, in place, and temporal setting. But what threads them in my mind is cultural and sexual encounter.

[Debbie Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pilgrim’s Way demonstrates Gurnah’s remarkable restraint in presenting his characters’ stories. He is a master of that old piece of writing advice, “Show, don’t tell.” Gurnah shows his characters’ complex lives and feelings without telling the reader what to feel or think. This evokes empathy while allowing readers to experience, however vicariously, the conflicts and ambiguity immigrants go through in their conflicted lives.

[Yesica Yolanda Yocasta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way racism is pictured might seem exagerated or even self-pitying, but it's not. It's painfully accurate. I couldn't stop nodding while reading this one. I felt less alone, which is the only reason I devote my time to reading books. This book is a gem, but it's not for everyone. I don't think someone who has not experienced being a second class immigrant in an European country can fully grasp the truth this story contains.

[Otto Jacobsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the fourth book by Gurnah that I’ve read and I do appreciate them.

This story, taking place in England, is a bit different from the others as we can see the immediate effects of segregation and racism in modern Britain.

I particularly found it interesting how Gurnah describes Daud’s, the main character, interaction with Christian institutions in Canterbury.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

I really enjoyed Gurnah's incisive and witty prose, and keen eye for the details of even the subtlest human interactions. The rating is brought down probably only because at times Daud became a bit much even for me (and when do I not love someone railing against colonizers?!).

[David Toms · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first go at Gurnah, and a pretty enjoyable novel but occasionally just found it lacked momentum and so read it in a bit of a stop start fashion. Thought he was pretty spot on in his representation of feelings of immigrants, and captured tension brilliantly.

[Azu Rikka · Rating 4 out of 5]

A raw and insightful novel with biting humor. The race aspect of the story sadly reminded me of my dear friend's experience, when he moved from the Gambia to Switzerland in 2011. I will definitely read more by the author.

[Joe Tristram · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clearly good writing, but I didn't enjoy it much
I guess it's probably a good representation of the complex feelings and motivations that a black African might have had on coming from terrible trauma to an appallingly violent and racist England in the 1970s.

[Manuel Abreu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly written well, but none of the characters felt interesting and nothing much happens. Sort of a postcolonial romcom with a heavy dash of depressive snark. I'd consider another novel by the author, though.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another triumph. Gurnah examines the experience of a Muslim Tanzanian emigrant in 1960s Britain to devastating effect.

[William G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author is becoming one of my favorites. This third book definitely didn't disappoint. Beautiful writing, interesting characters - and educational about Africa, England, empire, and colonialism.