Writing at the peak of his powers, Abdulrazak Gurnah gives us in Desertion a spellbinding novel of forbidden love and cultural upheaval, with consequences powerfully reverberating through three generations and across continents—from the heyday of the British empire to the aftermath of African independence.

Early one morning in 1899, in a small, dilapidated town along the coast of Mombassa, a Muslim man, Hassanali, sets out for a mosque but doesn’t get there. Out of the desert stumbles an Englishman who collapses at Hassanali’s feet: Martin Pearce—writer, traveler, something of an Orientalist. Hassanali cares for Pearce until

the Englishman is taken to the home of colonial officer Frederick Turner to recuperate. When Pearce returns to thank his Good Samaritan, he meets and is enraptured by Rehana, Hassanali’s sister—by her gorgeous eyes and tragic aura. And so begins the passionate, illicit love affair—two lives and cultures colliding—that informs the rich, finely woven tapestry of Desertion.

Gurnah, who has been short-listed for the Booker Prize, deftly and dramatically evokes the personal and political scandals of empire, the weight of tradition—of religion and culture—in everyday lives, the role of women in Muslim society, the vicissitudes of love, the complexities of filial relationships, the inexorability of miscegenation, and the power of fiction to charm and to harm. Desertion is a highly achieved, riveting work of imagination, brimming with controlled figural inventiveness, psychological acuity, and moral complexity.

"Against the backdrop of colonial Africa, Booker-nominated Gurnah (By the Sea; Paradise) crafts a dense, decade-straddling story of cross-cultural love and its repercussions in his seventh novel, which begins in Zanzibar in 1899. After Somali guides abandon him in the desert, English orientalist Martin Pearce is rescued and cared for by Indian Muslims, Hassalani and his sister, Rehana, until a government official finds him. Martin is a sympathetic hero, somehow more enlightened than the European colonialists, for whom racism is endemic. When he returns to thank Hassalani for sheltering him, he falls for the beautiful Rehana, and they begin a transgressive affair. The narrative then leaps forward to the late 1950s (just before Zanzibar's independence from colonial rule) to follow the lives of two brothers: Rashid, who will go to London on scholarship, and Amin, who embarks on a passionate, forbidden affair with Jamila, the sophisticated, divorced granddaughter of Rehana and Martin. Though the shift in time between Part I and II diffuses this richly textured novel's momentum, the author's luminous prose makes it easy to forgive the disjointedness as he explores Africa's emergence from European rule and the continuing fallout from Rehana and Martin's near-unthinkable union. (July)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

“Here is a writer at the top of his form, who commands a strong sense of narrative, a meticulous eye for family dynamics, and an understanding of the corrosive psychology of colonialism.” –The Seattle Times

“Affecting. . . . Gurnah perfectly renders the breathless exhilaration of first love and his characters–pulled from a time and place that seem to come from firsthand experience–seem true to life.”The Christian Science Monitor

“Beautiful, elegial. . . . As seductive as the Zanzibar shore it describes.” —The Boston Globe

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Early one morning in 1899, during Britain's embrace of the White man's Burden, in a small town on the east cost of Africa, Hassanali sets out for his observances at the mosque, but he never gets there. Out of the desert stumbles an Englishman who collapses at his feet. The man is Martin Pearce--writer, traveler, Orientalist--and Hassanali cares for him until he is taken to the home of a colonial officer to recuperate. Later, visiting Hassanali to thank him for his rescue, Pearce meets and is enraptured by Hassanali's sister, Rehana. So beings a passionate and illicit love affair that brings two cultures together: a love affair that will reverberate through three generations and across continents, its consequences surfacing in Zanzibar in the early 1950s, when, as the country moves inexorably toward independence--and revolution--Rehana's granddaughter is caught up in another forbidden affair. Desertion is at once concerned with the political and personal scandals of empire; the weight of tradition--of religion and culture--in quotidian lives; the role of women in Muslim society; the vicissitudes of love and the inexorability of miscegenation. It is a spellbinding, masterfully conceived, profoundly affecting work of fiction, and it should certainly bring Abdulrazak Gurnah the wider attention he deserves.

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in Zanzibar in 1948 and teaches at the University of Kent. He is the author of six novels, including Paradise, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, and By the Sea, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist.