'I live in a small town by the sea, as I have all my life, though for most of it it was by a warm green ocean a long way from here.'
In the late afternoon of 23rd November Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport with a small bag in which there lies a mahogany box containing incense - and little else. He used to be a furniture-shop owner, house owner, husband and father. Now he is an asylum seeker from paradise, claiming silence as his only protection.
Meanwhile, Latif Mahmud, poet and professor, voluntary refugee, lives quietly, alone in his London flat, bitter about the country and family he has never revisited.
The paradise these men have left is Zanzibar, an island in the Indian Ocean swept by the winds of the Musim, bringing traders with their perfumes and spices and a unique mix of cultures and histories.
When Saleh and Latif meet in a small English seaside town, there begins the unravelling of a story begun long ago - a story of seduction and deception, of the haphazard displacement of people, a story of love and betrayal and above all possession. And as the story unwinds, we see a country exploding into post-colonial independence, spinning in its attempt to find stability while its people are caught in the maelstrom of their times.
Abdulrazak Gurnah's sixth novel is a stunning and elegiac look at a world where imperialism has opened up boundaries only to close off borders. Passionate and profound, it reveals an author at the height of his powers.
