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Abdulrazak Gurnah Books

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Theft

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Admiring Silence

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Afterlives

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By the Sea

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Paradise

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“I have found myself leaning heavily on this pain. At first I tried to silence it, thinking it would go and leave me to my agitated content. That it would linger for a season, a firm reminder of the disquiet that lurks and coils below the surface of the stubbornly self-gratifying vision of our lives. Far from going, it became more clear, more precisely located, concrete, an object that occupied space within me, cockroachy, dark and intimate, emitting thick, stinking fumes that reeked of loneliness and terror. When I woke up in the morning, I groped for it, then sighed with plunging recognition as I felt it stirring inside me, alive and well.”

PainFearLonelinessTerrorIsolationBelongingExileOut Of PlaceRefugee Experience
Book:Admiring Silence
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“In no time at all after I moved, I was overcome by the enormity of my abandonment, like someone weeping in a crowd. I was astonished by the sudden surge of loneliness and terror I felt when I realized how stranded I was in this hostile place, that I did not know how to speak to people and win them over to me,that the bank, the canteen, the supermarket, the dark streets seemed so intimidating, and that I could not return from where I came – that, as I then thought, I had lost everything. Then Emma came and filled my life. I can’t describe that.”

LossLonelinessIsolationBelongingAbandonmentImmigration Experience
Book:Admiring Silence
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“It was later, when she was in her old bed in the dark, that the shock of it sank in. He was gone, and she was on her own with the child. She would never find happiness again. There was a pain sitting like a lump in her chest, a proper presence, and an anxious charge like a current through her limbs. Her ears hummed as she lay trembling in the dark, and for the first time in that long day her tears flowed. It felt as if love had fled from her forever.”

LoveTraumaBetrayal
Book:Theft
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“When he was alone on the mat in the storeroom that night, closed in and in the dark, he felt a panic cutting through his misery. He sat up in alarm and heaved for air. He was too old for sobbing in the dark, but he could not stop. After what seemed a long time, the nausea eased, and he stretched out on the floor mat and tried to sleep. He remembered his father sitting silent and sullen on the bus, then striding in front of him past the blue mosque. He remembered his look of rage, his last words to him.”

TraumaBetrayalToxic Family
Book:Theft
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“I'm afraid, you're right...though not only of them. We'll lose everything, including the way we live,' Hussein said. 'And these young people will lose even more. One day they'll make them spit on all that we know, and will make them recite their laws and their story of the world as if it were the holy word. When they come to write about us, what will they say? That we made slaves.”

HistoryOppressionColonialismAfricaEmpireColonisation
Book:Paradise
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“She learned to make it easier for herself, to evade pain by preparing her body to receive him. She learned to acquire some control so she was not always at his mercy, to delay and postpone, and to feign enjoyment. She said no when she could, and fought back when he rebuked her, returning vicious abuse to his hectoring threats. It was a nightmare she could not tell anyone about.”

Marital RapeMale DominationForced MarriageViolent Patriarchy
Book:Theft
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“he reserved his cruelty for her and took pleasure in it, and she feared that one day his viciousness would become violent. She did not know whether it was best to cower and tremble in front of him as a sign of her capitulation, which she knew he desired, or to be obstinate and abusive in return. She was learning to live with his contempt and her own self- disgust, but she was frantic for her child’s safety. She wondered, at times, if this was what life was like for most women, if they lived this way, in terror of their men. Why did they not speak? She did not know who she could speak to.”

PatriarchyFemale SubjugationLack Of Agency
Book:Theft
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