admiring silence

Just whizzed through Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah; a study of identity, belonging and home. The story of a man's escape and subsequent return, many years later, to his native Zanzibar. These are themes which are close to my heart. Good writing about home can be found in the books of Nancy Huston and Milan Kundera, particularly the book Ignorance. Ignorance, another story of a bitter home-coming, echoes the themes in Admiring Silence, how we create our identities culturally, the honey trap of nostalgia, the impossibility of belonging once you have left. Admiring Silence is particularly brilliant in it's satirical insights into our many-layered post-colonial cultures. 'The ruins are one of the many things which make England a nation, along with a certain over-confident, hedonist cynicism which passes for sophistication and street-wisdom. Because the England of those ruins does not exist anymore'.