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Bloomsbury presents The Last Gift by Abdulrazak Gurnah read by Ali Zayn

From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature an astounding meditation on family self and the meaning of home

Abbas has never told anyone about his pastbefore 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 sixtythree he suffers a collapse that renders him unable to speak about things he thought he would one day have to

Jamal and Hanna have grown up and gone out into the world They were both born in England but cannot shake a sense of apartness Hanna calls herself Anna now and has just moved to a new city to be near her boyfriend She feels the relationship is headed somewhere serious but the words have not yet been spoken out loud Jamal the listener of the family moves into a student house and is captivated by a young woman with dark blue eyes and her own complex story to tell Abbass illness forces both children home to the dark silences of their father and the fretful capability of their mother Maryam who has never thought to find herselfuntil now