By the Sea: A Novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah

By the Sea follows Saleh Omar, an elderly Zanzibari refugee arriving in a quiet English seaside town, and Latif Mahmud, a younger academic who shares a bitter, intertwined past with him in East Africa. Brought together in exile by a twist of fate, the two men unravel a generations-long family feud shaped by betrayal, shifting colonial regimes, and the agony of displacement. Through their competing memories, the novel exposes the deep emotional scars of the refugee experience and the fragile truths people construct to survive.