By the Sea: By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021

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Nor is the refugee only a victim: as his story goes on, he encounters other refugees, here in England, who were ruined by his own father—including the same Latif. Written in delicately evocative prose, By the Sea is about the complex relationship between two men from Zanzibar, each from opposing sides. When the pandemic gets serious, Lucy is encouraged by her ex-husband William to leave her cozy NYC apartment behind and join him in a cottage in Maine. COVID has just hit New York City, and Lucy’s ex, William, has whisked her off to Maine to hide out with her. With him he has a small bag in which lies his most precious possession—a mahogany box containing incense.

And if she does, she certainly is successful in letting the reader know what it might be like to be a different person. Due to recriminations over an inherited property, Saleh was eventually dispossessed of his house, arrested and imprisoned in various camps. Mahmud and Shaaban take it in turns to tell their side of the story, almost drenching the reader with too much detail. On the East Coat of Africa, monsoon winds carry boats out from the countries of the Persian Gulf and back from the ports of the Mozambique Canal.The picture Gurnah paints of the asylum-seeker's lot in late 20th-century Britain is not a favourable one.

Bottom line: Strout lovers will be in heaven, and newbies will be awed, I suspect, when they get their hands on this book. What we know constantly reels us in to our ignorance, makes us see the world as if we were still squatting in that shallow tepid pool!And it's a persistent fascination, something Larkin described, in Poetry of Departures, as 'this audacious, purifying, elemental move,' the mere prospect of which left him 'flushed and stirred'. Used to western reporters dashing in and out of the Strip in times of crisis, the people she met were touched by her genuine, unflinching interest and opened their hearts to her. It is a work of art, in the tradition of high modernism, and I'll bet it will still be read and admired in 75 years'.