Map Reading

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents Map Reading by Abdulrazak Gurnah, read by Damian Lynch.

‘One of the world’s most prominent postcolonial writers … He has consistently and with great compassion penetrated the effects of colonialism and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals’ Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee

Delivered in London on 7 December 2021, 'Writing' is the lecture of the Nobel Laureate in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah. Collected here with three further essays, it explores his coming-of-age, his early experiences in 1960s Britain, the narratives of oceans, his lifelong love affair with reading, and the power of writing to subvert the stories that have been handed to us.

Generous, funny and wise, this collection is the perfect introduction to the storyteller described as ‘one of Africa’s most important living writers’; whose work, now spanning four decades, continues to spin wonder and magic while offering penetrating insight into exile, migration and homecoming.

'In book after book, he guides us through seismic historic moments and devastating societal ruptures while gently outlining what it is that keeps those families, friendships and loving spaces intact' Maaza Mengiste

'A wondrous writer' Philippe Sands

Critics Review

Praise for Abdulrazak Gurnah: 'Rarely in a lifetime can you open a book and find that reading it encapsulates the enchanting qualities of a love affair
THE TIMES
Gurnah gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure
GUARDIAN
A master storyteller
FINANCIAL TIMES
A powerfully evocative oeuvre that keeps coming back to the same questions, in spare, graceful prose, about the ties that bind and the ties that fray
DAILY TELEGRAPH
A real writer, someone with something to say about the world
OBSERVER
A captivating storyteller, with a voice both lyrical and mordant, and an oeuvre haunted by memory and loss. His intricate novels of arrival and departure . reveal, with flashes of acerbic humour, the lingering ties that bind continents, and how competing versions of history collide
GUARDIAN
One of Africa's greatest living writers
GILES FODEN

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