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“... Abdulrazak Gurnah left Zanzibar a few years after the violent revolution of 1964, when the constitutional sultanate installed by the departing British was overthrown. It was a time, in Gurnah’s words, of ‘state terror and calculated humiliations’: as many as 17,000 people were killed, the Omani-descended ruling elite was expelled, and thousands were imprisoned; the Revolutionary Council nationalised the clove plantations and trading companies, bringing the economy to a standstill ...”

“... what African history and African life feel like from the inside. Both Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye and Abdulrazak Gurnah, writing about East Africa, succeed in giving us the feel of the inside, and their novels materially increase our knowledge of East African life and history. Moreover, they prove the point that having something to say is more important than ...”

“... forty years for a translation to be published in England. The love-affair in Pilgrims Way, by Abdulrazak Gurnah, who teaches literature at the University of Kent, comes under threat from the deeply-inscribed complexes of its hero: but he’s not actually mad, and love puts him back on his hinges, communicating again with the outside world. Daud’s ...”