By the Sea: A Novel

From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, a sweeping story of displacement, exile, and memory. By the Sea is a novel about two men from Zanzibar meeting in an English seaside town, their lives intertwined by the past. On a late November afternoon, Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport from Zanzibar. A former furniture store owner, he is a refugee under the protection of the British government. In his pocket he carries a small mahogany box containing incense—a relic of the past he never thought he would need again. In another part of England, Latif Mahmoud, a university lecturer, is living a quiet life. When he receives a letter summoning him to the seaside town where Saleh is staying, he has no idea what to expect. The two men have not seen each other since they were boys, and their meeting stirs up buried memories of love, betrayal, and the shared history that binds them together.