The Last Gift

By the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in LiteratureAbbas has never told anyone about his past; about what happened 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. Hanna calls herself Anna now and has just moved to a new city to be near her boyfriend. She feels the relationship is headed somewhere serious but the words have not yet been spoken out loud. Jamal the listener of the family moves into a student house and is captivated by a young woman with dark-blue eyes and her own complex story to tell. Abbass illness forces both children home to the dark silences of their father and the fretful capability of their mother Maryam who began life as a foundling and has never thought to find herself until now.________________________Gurnah is a master storyteller FINANCIAL TIMESGurnah writes with wonderful insight about family relationships and he folds in the layers of history with elegance and warmth THE TIMES