Langue française
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Kenya, 1899. Il est apparu à l'aube comme une figure de légende avant de s'effondrer aux pieds d'Hassanali, le marchand, sur le chemin de la mosquée. Martin Pearce, écrivain britannique, a été battu, volé et abandonné par ses guides dans le désert. Recueilli par Hassanali, il tombe amoureux fou de Rehana, la soeur de son hôte. Une relation interdite et scandaleuse s'initie, dont les conséquences se répercuteront sur les générations suivantes.Zanzibar, années 1950. Amin, Rashid et leur soeur Farida sont chacun en proie aux difficultés du secret. Farida vit un amour caché que ses parents désapprouveraient. Amin, lui, s'éprend d'une femme plus âgée, Jamila, la propre petite-fille de Rehana et de Pearce, enfant de la honte et objet de mille rumeurs scabreuses. Quant à Rashid, le narrateur, il part étudier à Londres dans un univers glacial et raciste, alors que Zanzibar, au lendemain de l'indépendance, bascule dans la violence et le chaos.
Londres, années 1960. Les parents de Rashid sont morts et les secrets ont été déliés. Dans un contexte social et racial apaisé, Rashid, devenu enseignant, rencontre par hasard la blanche Barbara, une lointaine cousine de Jamila. Ils s'aiment librement et décident de partir à la recherche de leurs racines communes et de Jamila à Zanzibar.
Formant un patchwork de cultures et de points de vue extraordinairement divers mais harmonieux en dépit des conflits sous-jacents, Abdulrazak Gurnah est aussi à l'aise chez les uns que chez les autres - Noirs, Blancs, Indiens, Arabes -, de la case africaine la plus simple à la mosquée aux portes bleues, du marchand indien négociant ses épices dans la lumière dorée du soleil brûlant à l'ombre à peine fraîche de la véranda de l'administrateur anglais sirotant son gin tout en philosophant sur les bienfaits de l'Empire de Sa Majesté britannique.De la fable poétique au témoignage désenchanté, Abdulrazak Gurnah raconte aussi les illusions dissipées avec un humour féroce et un réalisme désabusé. Mais Gurnah n'est ni cynique ni entièrement pessimiste, et les unions symboliques entre Noirs et Blancs tissent autant d'histoires dans une tapisserie délicate d'ombre et de lumière.
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Entre zanzibar et le lac victoria, c'est l'afrique des "grands" explorateurs blancs, les burton, livingston, stanley, qui, après les successives conquêtes portugaises puis arabes, ont défait ce pays, alors tanganyika, en deux entités, une pour l'angleterre, une pour l'allemagne.
Dans cette histoire de dominations, l'existence du jeune yusuf est d'une extrême légèreté que chaque vent déplace, chasse, emporte. vendu par son père en règlement d'une dette, il est mis au service d'un riche propriétaire, oncle aziz. là, en compagnie d'un autre jeune esclave, il commencera l'apprentissage de sa nouvelle vie. il fera le voyage des caravanes qui traversent le continent pour commercer, au risque d'y perdre la vie.
De retour, il sera le jouet des lubies sensuelles de sa maîtresse, cloîtrée dans un jardin qui ressemblait à l'eden.
Par l'un des grands écrivains de l'afrique anglophone, le roman troublé d'une jeunesse africaine au début de ce siècle.
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Près de la mer entremêle le destin de deux hommes réfugiés politique en Angleterre. Un grand texte sur l'exil et la dignité.
Un soir de novembre 1994, Saleh Omar, soixante-cinq ans, débarque à l'aéroport de Londres, un faux passeport en poche. Dans son ancienne vie, sur l'île de Zanzibar, Saleh possédait une boutique, était marié et père de famille. Aujourd'hui, tenant contre lui un petit sac dans lequel se trouve son bien le plus précieux, une boîte en acajou contenant de l'encens, il est demandeur d'asile dans un pays qui ne veut pas de lui.
À l'autre bout de la ville, Latif Mahmud attend impatiemment de rencontrer Saleh. Lorsque les deux hommes se retrouvent dans une ville côtière, une histoire se dévoile. Une histoire qui mêle amour et trahison, séduction et possession. À travers le destin mouvementé de deux hommes se dessine le combat d'un peuple qui tente désespérément de faire face à une succession d'événements tragiques.
Un grand roman d'amour et d'exil, de déchirements mais aussi d'espoir. -
LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2021 LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE 2021 ''Riveting and heartbreaking ... A compelling novel, one that gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure'' Maaza Mengiste, Guardian ''A brilliant and important book for our times, by a wondrous writer'' Philippe Sands, New Statesman , Books of the Year While he was still a little boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents by the German colonial troops. After years away, fighting in a war against his own people, he returns to his village to find his parents gone, and his sister Afiya given away.
Another young man returns at the same time. Hamza was not stolen for the war, but sold into it; he has grown up at the right hand of an officer whose protection has marked him life. With nothing but the clothes on his back, he seeks only work and security - and the love of the beautiful Afiya.
As fate knots these young people together, as they live and work and fall in love, the shadow of a new war on another continent lengthens and darkens, ready to snatch them up and carry them away.
''Rarely in a lifetime can you open a book and find that reading it encapsulates the enchanting qualities of a love affair ... One scarcely dares breathe while reading it for fear of breaking the enchantment'' The Times
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PARADISE - NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 2021
Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Bloomsbury uk
- 15 Novembre 2004
- 9780747573999
Born in East Africa, Yusuf has few qualms about the journey he is to make. It never occurs to him to ask why he is accompanying Uncle Aziz or why the trip has been organised so suddenly, and he does not think to ask when he will be returning. But the truth is that his ''uncle'' is a rich and powerful merchant and Yusuf has been pawned to him to pay his father''s debts. Paradise is a rich tapestry of myth, dreams and Biblical and Koranic tradition, the story of a young boy''s coming of age against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.
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On a late November afternoon Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport from Zanzibar, a far away island in the Indian Ocean. With him he has a small bag in which there lies his most precious possession - a mahogany box containing incense. He used to own a furniture shop, have a house and be a husband and father. Now he is an asylum seeker from paradise; silence his only protection. Meanwhile Latif Mahmud, someone intimately connected with Saleh''s past, lives quietly alone in his London flat. When Saleh and Latif meet in an English seaside town, a story is unravelled. It is a story of love and betrayal, of seduction and of possession, and of a people desperately trying to find stability amidst the maelstrom of their times.>
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Moving from revolutionary Zanzibar in the 1960s to restless London in the 1990s, Gravel Heart is a powerful story of exile, migration and betrayal, from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Paradise Salim has always believed that his father does not want him. Living with his parents and his adored Uncle Amir in a house full of secrets, he is a bookish child, a dreamer haunted by night terrors.
It is the 1970s and Zanzibar is changing. Tourists arrive, the island's white sands obscuring the memory of recent conflict: longed-for independence from British colonialism swiftly followed by bloody revolution. When his father moves out, retreating into dishevelled introspection, Salim is confused and ashamed. His mother explains neither this nor her absences with a strange man; silence is layered on silence.
When glamorous Uncle Amir, now a senior diplomat, offers Salim an escape, the lonely teenager travels to London for college. But nothing has prepared him for the biting cold and seething crowds of this hostile city. Struggling to find a foothold, and to understand the darkness at the heart of his family, Salim must face devastating truths about himself and those closest to him - and about love, sex and power.
Evoking the immigrant experience with unsentimental precision and profound insight, Gravel Heart is a powerfully affecting story of isolation, identity, belonging and betrayal, and is Abulrazak Gurnah's most dazzling achievement.
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**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021** ''There is a wonderful sardonic eloquence to this unnamed narrator''s voice'' Financial Times ''I don''t think I''ve ever read a novel that is so convincingly and hauntingly sad about the loss of home'' Independent on Sunday _____________________ He thinks, as he escapes from Zanzibar, that he will probably never return, and yet the dream of studying in England matters above that.
Things do not happen quite as he imagined - the school where he teaches is cramped and violent, he forgets how it feels to belong. But there is Emma, beautiful, rebellious Emma, who turns away from her white, middle-class roots to offer him love and bear him a child. And in return he spins stories of his home and keeps her a secret from his family.
Twenty years later, when the barriers at last come down in Zanzibar, he is able and compelled to go back. What he discovers there, in a story potent with truth, will change the entire vision of his life.>
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**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021** Vehement, comic and shrewd, Abdulrazak Gurnah''s first novel is an unwavering contemplation of East African coastal life Poverty and depravity wreak havoc on Hassan Omar''s family. Amid great hardship he decides to escape.
The arrival of Independence brings new upheavals as well as the betrayal of the promise of freedom. The new government, fearful of an exodus of its most able men, discourages young people from travelling abroad and refuses to release examination results. Deprived of a scholarship, Hassan travels to Nairobi to stay with a wealthy uncle, in the hope that he will release his mother''s rightful share of the family inheritance.
The collision of past secrets and future hopes, the compound of fear and frustration, beauty and brutality, create a fierce tale of undeniable power.>
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**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021** An extraordinary 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 pilgrimage to 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.
Demoralised by small persecutions and the squalor and poverty of his life, Daud takes refuge in his imagination. He composes wry, sardonic letters hectoring friends and enemies, and invents a lurid colonial past for every old man he encounters. His greatest solace is cricket and the symbolic defeat of the empire at the hands of the mighty West Indies. Although subject to attacks of bitterness and remorse, his captivating sense of humour never deserts him as he struggles to come to terms with the horror of his past and the meaning of his pilgrimage to England.>
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MAP READING - THE NOBEL LECTURE AND OTHER WRITINGS
Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Bloomsbury
- 24 Novembre 2022
- 9781526659897
''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> -
By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021 A searing tale of a young woman discovering her troubled family history and cultural past Dottie Badoura Fatma Balfour finds solace amidst the squalor of her childhood by spinning warm tales of affection about her beautiful names. But she knows nothing of their origins, and little of her family history - or the abuse her ancestors suffered as they made their home in Britain.
At seventeen, she takes on the burden of responsibility for her brother and sister and is obsessed with keeping the family together. However, as Sophie, lumpen yet voluptuous, drifts away, and the confused Hudson is absorbed into the world of crime, Dottie is forced to consider her own needs. Building on her fragmented, tantalising memories, she begins to clear a path through life, gradually gathering the confidence to take risks, to forge friendships and to challenge the labels that have been forced upon her.>
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B>Una historia de iniciación que ilumina la crudeza y la belleza de la África precolonial, por el premio Nobel de literatura 2021./b> br>br>Cuando los padres de Yusuf, de doce años, le dicen que vivirá con su tío Aziz durante una temporada, el chico se muestra entusiasmado. Pero lo que Yusuf no sabe es que su padre lo ha empeñado para saldar una deuda imposible de pagar, ni tampoco que Aziz no es pariente suyo, sino un rico y acaudalado comerciante con el que viajará por África central y las riberas del Congo en vísperas de la primera guerra mundial. A través de los ojos de ese chiquillo descubriremos una naturaleza exuberante y hostil, poblada de tribus despiadadas e invasores desalmados, en la que una vida humana vale tanto como unas cuantas gotas de agua. br>br>b>ENGLISH DESCRIPTIONbr>br>"[Gurnahs novels] recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world." --Nobel Committee for Literature at the Swedish Academybr>/b>br>Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, Paradise was characterized by the Nobel Prize committee as Abdulrazak Gurnahs breakthrough work. It is at once the chronicle of an African boys coming-of-age, a tragic love story, and a tale of the corruption of African tradition by European colonialism.br>br>Sold by his father in repayment of a debt, twelve-year-old Yusuf is thrown from his simple rural life into complexities of pre-colonial urban East Africa. Through Yusufs eyes, Gurnah depicts communities at war, trading safaris gone awry, and the universal trials of adolescence. The result is what Publishers Weekly calls a vibrant and powerful work that evokes the Edenic natural beauty of a continent on the verge of full-scale imperialist takeover.
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Barack Obama, via Facebook : A compelling story of how the transformative events of history weigh on individual lives and relationships. The Nobel Prizenominated Kenyan writer s best-known novel Set in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 19521960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
