Край морето

For the first time in Bulgarian – a novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021. Shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize.

Abdulrazak Gurnah masterfully weaves themes of alienation, betrayal, and despair in a story about two political emigrants who, at the end of their lives, far from their warm native seas, find understanding and forgiveness.

Saleh Omar arrives at London's Gatwick Airport from Zanzibar, a distant island in the Indian Ocean. His luggage consists only of a small bag where he has hidden his most precious possession: a mahogany box of incense. He once owned a furniture shop, had a home and family. Now he seeks refuge from 'paradise' and the only thing he can defend himself with is silence. Before long, Saleh will meet in a small English seaside town – this time northern, cold – his compatriot Latif Mahmud, a university lecturer, a man fate brings him together with not for the first time, and both return to memories and the past, to the ruthless whirlwinds of the turbulent times they were destined to live in, not only to settle their accounts with them and with each other, but also to find their way to redemption.