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Dottie
- Narrated by: Isabel Adomakoh Young
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Bloomsbury presents Dottie by Abdulrazak Gurnah, read by Isabel Adomakoh Young.
By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021.
A searing tale of a young woman discovering her troubled family history and cultural past.
Dottie Badoura Fatma Balfour finds solace amidst the squalor of her childhood by spinning warm tales of affection about her beautiful names. But she knows nothing of their origins, and little of her family history—or the abuse her ancestors suffered as they made their home in Britain.
At seventeen, she takes on the burden of responsibility for her brother and sister and is obsessed with keeping the family together. However, as Sophie, lumpen yet voluptuous, drifts away, and the confused Hudson is absorbed into the world of crime, Dottie is forced to consider her own needs. Building on her fragmented, tantalising memories, she begins to clear a path through life, gradually gathering the confidence to take risks, to forge friendships and to challenge the labels that have been forced upon her.
Critic Reviews
"Gurnah is a master storyteller." (Aminatta Forna, Financial Times)
"[A] captivating storyteller, with a voice both lyrical and mordant, and an oeuvre haunted by memory and loss. His intricate novels of arrival and departure...reveal, with flashes of acerbic humour, the lingering ties that bind continents, and how competing versions of history collide." (Guardian)
"Gurnah writes with wonderful insight about family relationships and he folds in the layers of history with elegance and warmth." (The Times)