02150cam a2200289 i 4500 323426819 TxAuBib 20170911120000.0 170727s2017||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u bl2017031016 9781632868138 28.00 163286813X 28.00 eng rda TxAuBib rda Gurnah, Abdulrazak, 1948- Gravel heart [BOOK] / Abdulrazak Gurnah. New York : Bloomsbury, 2017. 261 pages ; 25 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier 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 disheveled introspection, Salim is confused and ashamed. His mother does not discuss the change, nor does she explain her absences with a strange man; silence is layered on silence. When glamorous Uncle Amir, now a senior diplomat, offers Salim an escape, the lonely teenager travels to London for college. But nothing has prepared him for the biting cold and seething crowds of this hostile city. Struggling to find a foothold, and to understand the darkness at the heart of his family, he must face devastating truths about those closest to him--and about love, sex and power. Evoking the immigrant experience with unsentimental precision and profound understanding, Gravel Heart is a powerfully affecting story of isolation, identity, belonging, and betrayal, and Abdulrazak Gurnah's most astonishing achievement. 20170921. Tanzanians England London Fiction. College students Fiction. Zanzibar Fiction. London (England) Fiction.