By the sea av Abdulrazak Gurnah

   "Rachel did not come the next morning. I sed the bathroom with my eyes shut, touching what I had to touch with my fingertips. Then I opened the curtains and sat on the floor of my room, with Alfonso's towel spread under me. My room was at the back of the house, overlooking an untended garden made gloomy by large bushes and trees. The rain was running down the window-panes. I had not been able to wash myself properly after the big ablution, especially as the beans had given me the runs as they always did. I cleaned myself as well as I could with the paper, but as I sat there on the floor I felt as if a stain was spreading under me. The house was silent, everyone still in bed." (sid 57)

By the Sea (2001) av Abdulrazak Gurnah rekommenderas av Maria Olaussen, professor i engelska med litteraturvetenskaplig inriktning i Göteborg. Hon har träffat Abdulrazak Gurnah flera gånger och kan hans författarskap väl, och har även utvecklat ett stort antal kurser med fokus på afrikansk litteratur och postkolonial teori. Hennes studenter på kursen postkoloniala texter och teorier ska läsa By the sea, vilket varit bestämt sedan länge och nu känns extra roligt, Olaussen tycker att alla borde läsa den, bra bok att börja med.

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. 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 and betrayal, of seduction and of possession, and of a people desperately trying to find stability amidst the maelstrom of their times.

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