Desertion By Abdulrazak Gurnah, Bloomsbury, £7.99

This is a novel which starts out as one thing and becomes quite another.

In the beautifully atmospheric first part, Gurnah tells the story of the passionate love between an Englishman, who arrives on the verge of collapse in a small African town at the end of the nineteenth century, and the sister of the Muslim man who rescues him.

The author gently absorbs the reader into this poetic portrayal of clashing cultures and a doomed relationship, before an abrupt change in pace and style brings us forward three generations to a Muslim family living in Zanzibar.

Now, the echoes of that scandalous affair reverberate in the lives of two brothers destined to follow very different paths in life.

By skilfully interweaving the points of view of their principal characters we follow the decline of a society subjected to political turmoil, and share in the experience of loss and emptiness that always result from desertion, where it be of as lover, family or country.
LB
 
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