by Gurnah, Abdulrazak | Fiction & related items
Published 08/07/2002 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc in the United Kingdom
Paperback | 256 pages
**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2002'One scarcely dares breathe while reading it for fear of breaking the enchantment' The TimesOn a late November afternoon Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport from Zanzibar, a far away island in the Indian Ocean. With him he has a small bag in which 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, someone intimately connected with Saleh's past, lives quietly alone in his London flat. When Saleh and Latif meet in an English seaside town, a story is unravelled. It is a story of love and betrayal, seduction and possession, and of a people desperately trying to find stability amidst the maelstrom of their times.