Theft Audiobook By Abdulrazak Gurnah cover art

Theft

A Novel

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Theft

By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
Narrated by: Ashley Zhangazha
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About this listen

In his first new novel since winning the 2021 Nobel Prize, a master storyteller captures a time of dizzying global change.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania. Karim returns to his sleepy hometown after university with new swagger and ambition. Fauzia glimpses in him a chance at escape from a smothering upbringing. The two of them offer a haven to Badar, a poor boy still unsure if the future holds anything for him at all. As tourism, technology, and unexpected opportunities and perils reach their quiet corner of the world, bringing, each arrives at a different understanding of what it means to take your fate into your own hands.

©2025 Abdulrazak Gurnah (P)2025 Penguin Audio
Coming of Age Genre Fiction World Literature
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Critic reviews

Theft takes many forms intimate and cultural, subtle and obvious in the newest web of interconnected lives masterfully spun by Nobel laureate Gurnah… Written with transfixing precision, wit, insight, and suspense, Theft is profoundly nuanced and revealing.”—Booklist, STARRED review

"Gurnah is a captivating, enthralling storyteller whose characters are vibrant and sympathetic. The pages fly by quickly in his wonderful new novel."—Library Journal, STARRED review

“Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gurnah delivers a story whose title reverberates throughout. . . No word is wasted. . .A tightly constructed family drama with surprising complications.”—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review

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This novel does not present a traditional story but instead offers a compilation of biographies of individuals whose lives intersect. It reads almost like an autobiography of Karim, richly detailing his encounters with various people. While the narrative style is distinctive, this work does not quite reach the heights of Gurnah's other acclaimed novels, including Paradise and Afterlives.

Bader

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Didn’t love this book. I usually love books that take place in areas of the world that I am ignorant of. I love learning about different ways of thinking and living. Not this one. I was often bored. Nothing remarkable at all.

Potting more than a slice of life

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