A novel with an epic feel, even at 320 pages, building a complex, character-based story that stretches over generations.
Pensive novel of desperate lives in colonial East Africa by 2021 Nobel Prize–winning writer Gurnah.
Where is Ilyas Hassan? That’s the central question that runs through Tanzanian British author Gurnah’s new novel, one that occupies its four principal characters. The oldest is Khalifa, who “did not look Indian, or not the kind of Indian they were used to seeing in that part of the world,” the product of an African mother and Gujarati father. Khalifa is but one of many Gujarati settlers around Zanzibar, territory taken by Germany in the “Scramble for Africa.” The Germans are not kind: By their lights, they “had to make the Africans feel the clenched fist of German power in order that they should learn to bear the yoke of their servitude compliantly.” Ilyas, a young migrant, is pressed into service in the schutztruppe, the colonial army, sent off to fight against first native peoples and then, as World War I erupts, the British. A younger man named Hamza also enlists, “silently wretched about what he had done.” Brutalized by a German officer in his unit, Hamza deserts and returns home and finds work in the same commercial enterprise as Ilyas and Khalifa, who has married a woman who is convinced that she is “surrounded by blasphemers,” a pious holy terror who reveals hidden depths. Gurnah’s story is an understated study in personality; the action is sparing, the reaction nuanced and wholly believable, and the love story that develops between Hamza and a young woman named Afiya touching: “ ‘I have nothing,’ he said. ‘Nor do I,’ she said. ‘We’ll have nothing together.’ ” The denouement, too, is unexpected, the story drawn to a close by two Ilyases: the original and Hamza’s son, who bears his name. Gurnah’s novel pairs well with Cameroon writer Patrice Nganang’s novel A Trail of Crab Tracks as a document of the colonial experience, and it is impeccably written.
A novel with an epic feel, even at 320 pages, building a complex, character-based story that stretches over generations.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-59354-1-883
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.
A phone call from her past disrupts the tenuously reconstructed life of a concert pianist turned farmer’s wife.
We know from the beginning that Livia Cable is the battered survivor of her brother Cyrus’ death by suicide, a devastating romance, and a career-ending injury. Only 11 when Cyrus stepped in front of a train, she was already marked out as different in her rural Tennessee hometown by her extraordinary musical ability. The siblings had huddled together against their angry mother’s frequent beatings, and Livia still feels abandoned by Cyrus years later, when she picks up the phone to hear the voice of Sigurd, the fiery labor organizer she loved and lost to “the revolution” while on scholarship at the Indiana University School of Music. Now married to kind, steady childhood friend Charlie, Livia looks back on her affair with Sigurd as she struggles to deal with the recent death of her mother, a compulsive hoarder who left a house stuffed with junk to be disposed of and bitter memories that haven’t faded over time. Kingsolver skillfully juggles the two time frames to unravel Livia’s complicated feelings about the life she lost when her right hand was crushed and the life she has now as a country piano teacher. A partita, she explains to Sigurd early on, “is a composition made of a lot of parts with a lot of different moods…the artist’s work is to make them all add up to something that feels whole.” That’s precisely what Kingsolver does in this beautifully paced and judged narrative, which builds to revelations uncovered amid the piles of trash in Livia’s childhood home about the reasons for Cyrus’ suicide (clearly foreshadowed) and their mother’s rage (startling and heartbreaking). A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement.
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780063577541
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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