By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah

By the Sea by Abdulrazak GurnahOn 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,

Travelling in Thailand in the early 1940s

Collected here are Gogol's finest tales - stories which combine the wide-eyed

always on the periphery and always perilously close to the abyss

including many experiences that sadhaks

his wife Mercedes Barcha

She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way

as well as the consequences of motherless-ness

increasingly disarming

and meetings distract you and stress you out

in which the fates of Nathaniel

Sudha Murty’s new book comprises two novellas that explore two quests by two different men—both for mothers they never knew they had

author of The Persistence of CasteB