By the Sea

Bloomsbury. London: Bloomsbury, 2001 Large 8vo., dark aqua publisher's boards, spine lettered in bronze with publisher's device to foot; in the photographic dustwrapper with a design by Nathan Burton; dark cream endpapers; matching bronze ribbon marker; pp. [vi], 245, [v]; slight bruising to spine tips; otherwise fine in fine wrapper. First edition, with full number line 1-10, preceding the US edition by one month. Longlisted for the Booker Prize in the year of publication, By the Sea follows characters Latif and Saleh, who meet in a seaside town on the English coast. Like most of his other works, the novel evokes themes of alienation, loneliness, and exile, with both protagonists attempting to find a sense of place against a shared backdrop of painful past experiences. Gurnah reportedly began writing fiction 'out of homesickness' for Zanzibar, developing his novels from diaries he himself kept, and taking as his heroes the displaced, and those affected by war or crisis. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, making him the first black writer to receive the prize since Toni Morrison in 1993, and the first African writer since Doris Lessing in 2007. A compelling work, and one which Guardian writer Candida Clark writes is "a poetic manifesto against the tyranny of language when used as a tool of the state." . Near Fine. Hardcover. 1st Edition. 1st Printing. 2001.