**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021**
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2002
'One scarcely dares breathe while reading it for fear of breaking the enchantment' The Times
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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 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, seduction and possession, and of a people desperately trying to find stability amidst the maelstrom of their times.
- ISBN10 0747557853
- ISBN13 9780747557852
- Publish Date 8 July 2002 (first published 21 May 2001)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback (A-Format (178x111 mm))
- Pages 256
- Language English
- URL http://bloomsbury.com/Trade/