num_pages: 245
description: On 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 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, but 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, betrayal, of seduction and of possession, and of a people desperately trying to find stability amidst the maelstrom of their times.
language: English
title: By the Sea
titlecomplete: By the Sea
genres: Nobel Prize, Africa, Tanzania, Literary Fiction, Novels, 21st Century, Literature, Fiction, African Literature, Contemporary
ratings_count: 2891
awards: awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Booker Prize
category: Longlist, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Fiction
publisher: TRAFALGAR SQUARE +