Desertion by Abdulrazak Gurnah

**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021**

‘A careful and heartfelt exploration of the way memory inevitably consoles and disappoints us’ Sunday Times

‘Beautifully written and pleasurable … The work of a maestro’ Guardian

‘An absorbing novel about abandonment and loss’ Daily Telegraph
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Early one morning in 1899, in a small town along the coast from Mombasa, Hassanali sets out for the mosque. But he never gets there, for out of the desert stumbles an ashen and exhausted Englishman who collapses at his feet. That man is Martin Pearce – writer, traveller and something of an Orientalist. After Pearce has recuperated, he visits Hassanali to thank him for his rescue and meets Hassanali’s sister Rehana; he is immediately captivated.