Demoralised by small persecutions and the poverty of his life, Daud takes refuge in his imagination. He composes wry, sardonic letters hectoring friends and enemies, and invests a lurid colonial past for every old man he encounters.

His greatest so;ace is cricket and the symbolic defeat of the empire at the hands of the mighty West Indies. Although subject to attacks of bitterness and remorse, his captivating sense of humour never deserts him as he struggles to come to terms with the horror of his past and the meaning of his pilgrimage to England.

‘In clean, measured prose, Gurnah zooms in on individual acts of violence…and unexpected acts of kindness’