Memory of Departure

Memory of Departure is a novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1987 by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom.[1] It is Gurnah's first novel. It follows a Muslim man in an unnamed African country who seeks to be educated abroad.[2]

In a review for The New York Times, Richard E. Nicholls praised the novel as "fierce" and "vivid".[2] Kirkus referred to the novel as "artfully spare" and indicated an expectation that "more good things" were to be written by Gurnah.[3] In a 2022 article about Gurnah and his work, published by The New Yorker, Julian Lucas wrote that the novel "established a pattern that Gurnah continued to refine" through his subsequent work of "a ceaseless shuttling between the claustrophobia of home and the loneliness of exile".[4]