Moving from revolutionary Zanzibar in the 1960s to restless London in the 1990s, Gravel Heart is a powerful story of belonging, betrayal and exile, from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Paradise

[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 is a master storyteller -- Aminatta Forna Financial Times Gurnah writes with wonderful insight about family relationships and he folds in the layers of history with elegance and warmth The Times Exile has given Gurnah a perspective on the "balance between things" that is astonishing, superb Observer Gurnah etches with biting incisiveness the experiences of immigrants exposed to contempt, hostility or patronising indifference on their arrival in Britain Spectator Gurnah writes with quiet humour and great affection about pre-revolutionary Zanzibar and its people ... Gurnah writes beautifully, with the satisfying assurance of someone who knows how to achieve his effects without undue fuss but with absolute precision Daily Telegraph Gurnah evokes his world in poetic prose which is pure and lucid Guardian His prose is elegant and evocative Mail on Sunday Gurnah has laid powerful imaginative claim to the eastern seaboard of Africa Independent

Abdulrazak Gurnah is the author of eight novels: Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Dottie, Admiring Silence, By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award), Desertion (shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize), and The Last Gift. He is a Professor of English at the University of Kent, and was a Man Booker Prize judge in 2016. He lives in Canterbury.