Desertion

The breakthrough book from the highly acclaimed author of By the Sea

Rich in detail and filled with acute observations, this novel movingly examines the absences eating away at the core of all of its characters

As beautifully written and pleasurable as anything I've read ... Gurnah's portrait is the work of a maestro

This is an impressive and deeply serious book, a careful and often heartfelt exploration of the way memory inevitably consoles and disappoints us

An absorbing novel about abandonment and loss ... Gurnah writes beautifully, with the satisfying assurance of someone who knows how to achieve his effects without undue fuss but with absolute precision

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.