We learn of the Cedars' current house-maid, Miss Vavasour, and her other tenant: a retired army Colonel, often described as a background character (even during his important role in the denouement). With him he has a small bag in which lies his most precious possession—a mahogany box containing incense. Only when they make peace with their regrets, they can finally accept themselves and make sense of their past.

Skin is, after all just a few layers of protein, carbohydrates, water and gunk that cover each and every one of us – but it’s not who we are, we don’t need to know what Lucy looks like. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.Not everything or everyone is perfect, but life never is and Lucy is doing the best she can just like the rest of us. Published in 2021, novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea tackles these questions and explores how remembering and forgetting are deeply entangled. He later explained, "Whether The Sea is a successful work of art is not for me to say, but a work of art is what I set out to make. However, I feel reading the preceding books in the Amgash series prior to this one would enable the reader to fully appreciate and feel invested in the character and her story. They are both now in their 70’s and become quite companionable while they worry about their two adult daughters and other family members, take their solitary walks, have a few “safe distancing” visits outdoors with a couple friends they meet.

Each character could become a character in her own tale, a contemporary Arabian Nights story rendered post-exotic by its political relevance in modern times. Not only did they grow up in the same village, but their families fought over each other’s possessions for years. The only regret about this post-exotic legend is that it should end at all—there are other protagonists in this book whose flight we'd have liked to follow, whether they're blown by those tropical winds to the gray cities of England or other places by the sea. Despite the actual present day setting of the novel (everything is written by Max, after Anna's death, while he stays in the Cedars' house), the underlying motivation to Max's redaction of memories, the single setting which ties the novel together, are Max's childhood memories. 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!

Rarely in a lifetime can you open a book and find that reading it encapsulates the enchanting qualities of a love affair . The through lines of our lives have veered beyond our control [during lockdown], yet some of us cling to the myth that we can find a path back to 2019. Another coincidence (oh how I love them): I had just showered and noticed that the water was at my ankles; I fretted, wondering about hiring a plumber. Since his home country was once a British possession, he qualifies for asylum—yet, he is traveling on a fake passport. We also receive glimpses of the torture and imprisonment of Shaaban in his own country, where men abuse their power after independence from colonialism.

This novel is beautifully written and weaves its way through two parallel lives as it tells the story of two extended families, their interactions, their experiences of living through and after a revolution (the 1964 revolution in Zanzibar), and life post colonialism. For the next several months, it's just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea. We have become part of this universe that unfolds in front of us at a level where picturesque or exoticism become simply beauty and diversity. After brief encounters, and fruitless moments of curiosity, Max becomes infatuated with Connie Grace upon first sight; seeing her lounging at the beach launches him to acquaint Chloe and Myles in, what Max stipulates to have been a conscious effort to get inside the Cedars, hence, closer to Mrs. Mahmud and Shaaban take it in turns to tell their side of the story, almost drenching the reader with too much detail.Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Helen Murdoch and Helen's Book Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. It provides an ending that is no ending at all: memory remakes whatever facts precede departure, glossing them with imagination.

It was first published in the United States by The New Press on 11 June 2001 [1] and in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury Publishing in May 2001. Written in delicately evocative prose, By the Sea is about the complex relationship between two men from Zanzibar, each from opposing sides. How do we fit our original home into our new home and how do come to understand ourselves in this new place?But really, did Lucy deserve to be attacked for assuming her heterosexual daughter was considering an affair with a man? The poetry of storytelling completes the picture of history, of how we see ourselves, rather than being an addendum to culture.