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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph Peter Parker
Gurnah writes beautifully, with the satisfying assurance of someone who knows how to achieve his effects without undue fuss but with absolute precision.
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Outstanding
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The Independent Elleke Boehmer
For all the novel's unsettling complicities and parallels, Desertion offers many pleasures.
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Outstanding
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The Nation Laila Lalami
[Desertion] has a staying power that belies its quietness.
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Favorable
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The Spectator Francis King
Gurnah, born and brought up in Zanzibar, deploys a style far superior to that of many a native-born English writer.
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Favorable
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The New Yorker
A meditation on African history, estrangement, and loss.
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Favorable
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The Guardian Mike Phillips
Most of Desertion is as beautifully written and pleasurable as anything I've read recently.
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Favorable
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The Independent James Urquhart
There are no unequivocal judgements in Gurnah's tender prose; his lovers remain buffeted by the vagaries of received propriety and historical circumstance.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Alan Cheuse
A quiet but admirable achievement.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Anita Sethi
Rich in detail and filled with acute observations, [Desertion] movingly examines the absences eating away at the core of all of its characters.
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Gurnah... crafts a dense, decade-straddling story of cross-cultural love and its repercussions.
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Mixed
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Christian Science Monitor Aaron Clark
[Desertion] is a quietly affecting, though somewhat disjointed, story of love and loneliness - and a sad testament to the narrow religious and cultural confines within which many people are forced to try to sustain their relationships.
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Mixed
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Los Angeles Times Richard Eder
[Desertion] is awkwardly divided into three parts as it treats three Zanzibarian generations. It is intended as a roman-fleuve but the connection is schematic -- not a river but separate aquifers, each of very different composition. [14 Aug 2005]
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Mixed
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Library Journal Prudence Peiffer
Gurnah's seventh novel... is a spirited horse straining at the bit, so it is a great pity that the author doesn't loosen the reins more and let it run. [1 May 2005, p. 72]
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Anderson Tepper
Throughout, Gurnah strains bravely -- at times poignantly -- for larger connections.
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Unfavorable
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The Observer Adam Mars-Jones
Gurnah himself can be charged with a form of literary desertion, for abandoning his chosen genre before the halfway mark of the book, without coming up with a satisfactory substitute.
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Unfavorable
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Kirkus Reviews
While the opening chapters here take forever to build momentum, its concluding ones are hurried and overcrowded with last-minute explanations.
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