An African boy comes of age in an East Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence, in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s powerful historical fiction.
Abdulrazak Gurnah’s story of love and betrayal, of seduction and possession, and of people desperately trying to find stability amidst the maelstrom.
Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport from Zanzibar, a faraway island in the Indian Ocean. With him he has a small bag in which there lies his most precious possession - a mahogany box containing incense. He used to own a furniture shop, have a house and be a husband and father. Now he is an asylum seeker from paradise; silence his only protection. Meanwhile Latif Mahmud lives quietly alone in his London flat. When Saleh and Latif meet in an English seaside town, a story is unravelled.
Abdulrazak Gurnah
About the Author
Abdulrazak Gurnah is the author of nine novels. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in October 2021. He is Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent, and was a Booker Prize judge in 2016.Other nominated books by Abdulrazak Gurnah
