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News from a small island: Theft, by Abdulrazak Gurnah, reviewed

Decades of change follow the 1964 revolution in Zanzibar, with boutique hotels multiplying in Stone Town’s haunted streets. But is a whole way of life being threatened?

10 May 2025

9:00 AM

10 May 2025

9:00 AM

Theft Abdulrazak Gurnah

Bloomsbury, pp.246, 18.99

In 2021, the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature made Abdulrazak Gurnah the world’s second-best-known Zanzibari – after a certain Farrokh Bulsara, aka Freddie Mercury. Forgive the flippant comparison, but the pop world’s perplexity over Queen’s vocalist’s origins feels germane to the quest for a coherent self and story undertaken by the Nobel laureate’s chief characters.

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