Beautifully written, Admiring Silence, by Abdulrazak Gurnah follows the return of the protagonist, who has been living in England since the independence regime of Zanzibar lashed out against the Arab families of the island, and the island descended into poverty. He has a companion and child in England. Returning, he finds that Zanzibar holds few of the memories of childhood he hoped to rekindle, and he finds himself more lost than ever. The style is deliberately a bit foggy, as Gurnah tries to recreate the narrators own sense of displacement. While this is a genre I don’t normally enjoy (the emotional labor of the return home, and the creation of a new set of memories of those left behind) there is no doubting Gurnah’s very capable and enjoyable prose.