Dottie
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Dottie
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Narrated by:
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Isabel Adomakoh Young
About this listen
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
‘Gurnah writes with wonderful insight about family relationships and he folds in the layers of history with elegance and warmth’ The Times
_________________________________
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.©1990 Abdulrazak Gurnah (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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"Gurnah is a master storyteller." (Aminatta Forna, Financial Times)
"[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)
"Gurnah writes with wonderful insight about family relationships and he folds in the layers of history with elegance and warmth." (The Times)
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
Salim has always known 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—the 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 does not discuss the change.
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5 out of 5 stars
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So enjoyed this!
- By S. Z. Sykes on 04-26-24
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Admiring Silence
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 16
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 11
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Story4 out of 5 stars 11
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, the barriers come down in Zanzibar and he is able and compelled to go back.
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5 out of 5 stars
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WOW. Fantastic book; perfect narrator
- By MAJ_lawyer on 05-01-23
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The Last Gift
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Ali Zayn
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 13
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 9
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 9
Abbas has never told anyone about his past—before he was a sailor on the high seas, before he met his wife Maryam outside a drugstore in Exeter, before they settled into a quiet life with their children, Jamal and Hanna. Now, at the age of sixty-three, he suffers a collapse that renders him unable to speak about things he thought he would one day have to.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A Depressing Story About Nothing
- By X on 11-09-23
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Paradise
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Chukwudi Iwuji
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 20
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Story4 out of 5 stars 20
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, Paradise was characterized by the Nobel Prize committee as Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “breakthrough” work. It is at once the chronicle of an African boy’s coming-of-age, a tragic love story, and a tale of the corruption of African tradition by European colonialism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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East African pre-colonual history from the inside out
- By Nzingha on 03-08-24