Gravel Heart

Name: Gravel Heart
ISBN: 9787532792719

阿卜杜勒拉扎克·古尔纳 / 赵挺Shanghai Translation Publishing House · ChinaAug 2023

4.2

Word count: 174K words
Chapters: 18
ISBN: 9787532792719

Report an error Find this book

Summary

Selim lives with his parents and his uncle Amir in a house full of secrets. One day his father moves out; his mother says nothing, then forms a new family with a stranger. Selim cannot understand his father's choice and feels ashamed of his silence. After secondary school, his uncle, a senior diplomat, takes him to London, but the city's clamor and cold leave him adrift, barely surviving in endless loneliness. After his mother's death, Selim returns home to uncover the secret that tore his family apart. At last he must face the wounds of those closest to him—and the truth nearly destroys him.

Editor's review

Gravel Heart turns a family secret into a slowly unfolding earthquake. Selim lives with his parents and uncle in a house full of secrets; one day his father moves out, his mother says nothing and forms another family, and the boy cannot understand his father's silence—and feels ashamed of it. After secondary school, his uncle, a senior diplomat, takes him to London, where the noisy, cold city offers no answers, only the struggle to survive in endless loneliness. After his mother's death, he returns home to uncover the truth behind his family's disintegration and finally must face the wounds of those closest to him—a truth that nearly destroys him. Gurnah's narration is steady and restrained, layering the alienation of migration with the tearing of family ethics; he does not rush to explain but lets the reader approach step by step with Selim. Suitable for readers willing to bear heavy themes and drawn to psychological and ethical depth, to be read in quiet periods, with attention to the contrast between the London sections and the return-home sections.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy novels of family ethics and psychological depth
Literature lovers interested in the loneliness of migration and the theme of returning home
Patient readers willing to follow the protagonist as he approaches the truth layer by layer
Readers with a systematic reading plan for Gurnah's works

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer clear endings and a light reading experience
Readers sensitive to family trauma and heavy themes
Readers who need fast-moving plots and lack patience

Reading tips

Read in three stages: childhood family, London years, return-home search; pause after each stage before continuing.
Pay attention to the echoes between the father's silence and the uncle's image; they are key clues to understanding the truth.
While reading the London section, feel how the environmental description corresponds to loneliness; do not rush to look for plot answers.
After finishing, look back at the opening family scenes and reinterpret details that were overlooked at the time.

About the publisher

Shanghai Translation Publishing House China · Founded in 1978

Shanghai Translation Publishing House is a Chinese publisher oriented mainly toward translation and publishing. Its publications cover foreign literature, world classics and classic works, as well as social culture, folk literature and classical poetry. The database contains 2,618 titles, including Never Let Me Go, Les Misérables (2 volumes), Don Quixote (illustrated collector's edition), The Complete Comedies of Molière (4 volumes), The Complete Novels of Kafka (3 volumes), The Collected Works of Dostoevsky (9-volume set), Reason and Persons, and Oedipus Rex (Translation Classics). Its author resources include foreign writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Victor Hugo, Cervantes and Molière, as well as translators such as Zheng Kelu, Sun Jiameng, Li Jianwu and Zhang Kun. The publisher has brands such as "Translation Classics Selections" and "Translation Documentary," and emphasizes translated works in foreign literature and the humanities and social sciences, while also publishing bilingual dictionaries and foreign-language educational books. Public information is limited; the above is based on the book information in the database.

版权信息
献词
第一部分
1 一支棉花糖
2 父亲离去后
第二部分
3 我会每天给您写信
4 “非统”房
5 小乌托邦
6 比莉
7 母亲
第三部分
8 归来
9 第一夜
10 第二夜
11 怀疑会背叛我们
译后记
附录 2021年诺贝尔文学奖得主阿卜杜勒拉扎克·古尔纳获奖演说写作

FAQ

What is the core story of Gravel Heart?

Selim's father leaves home, his mother forms another family, and he goes with his uncle to live in London. After his mother's death, he returns home to investigate the secret of his family's disintegration and finally faces the wounds of those closest to him and a truth that nearly destroys him.

Is this book very depressing to read?

The work involves family secrets, silence, and wounds, and its tone is rather heavy, but the narration is restrained and does not deliberately sensationalize; readers sensitive to heavy themes should consider this for themselves.

What role does Selim's uncle play in the story?

The uncle is a senior diplomat who takes Selim to London after secondary school. He is a key figure at a turning point in Selim's life and is also closely connected to the unfolding of the family secret.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

阿卜杜勒拉扎克·古尔纳 Author

Abdulrazak Gurnah is an important contemporary novelist whose works have been translated into Chinese in more than a dozen editions, often classified under foreign literature and classics. His writing centers on migration, diaspora and identity, with a quiet, restrained style that reveals the psychological tensions of characters crossing geographical and cultural boundaries through everyday detail. Representative works include Paradise, Afterlives, Admiring Silence, By the Sea, Gravel Heart and The Pilgrims' Way, along with two five-volume collected editions of his works. Because public information is limited, basic details such as his dates and nationality remain to be confirmed; yet the translated works show his concern with colonial legacies, memory and belonging, and a narrative that combines realism with symbolic depth, offering a distinctive perspective on contemporary African and migrant experience.

赵挺 Author

Zhao Ting: publicly available information is limited, and the author's identity and biographical background remain unclear. Nevertheless, the seven works included in the collection offer a glimpse of the editorial or authorial interests behind them. Representative titles include The Complete Ripley (5-volume set), A River Runs Through It, Gravel Heart, The Gurnah Collection, Volume II (5-volume set), Under Western Eyes, A Very English Scandal, and Funny Girl. Most are introductions and compilations of foreign literature, spanning mystery and detective fiction, classics, and other categories, with some reference to otherworldly fantasy. Judging from the selections, Zhao Ting appears to favor foreign novels with literary quality and narrative tension, balancing genre reading pleasure with the translation of classic texts, and this work makes contemporary foreign literature more accessible to Chinese readers.