The Small-town Sea

'A haunting portrait of a family caught in death's long shadow' INDIAN EXPRESSUprooted from a bustling city, the thirteen-year-old protagonist of The Small-town Sea is replanted in his father's home town where he struggles to cope with his new life. He reluctantly makes friends with Bilal, a boy who lives in the orphanage run by the local mosque. Together, they embark on clandestine adventures while his ailing father-a writer whose last wish is to die listening to the sea he has grown up by-rediscovers people from his childhood. But his father's death unsettles the boy's life again, and he finds himself grappling with altogether unexpected challenges.'A Swami and Friends suitable for the darkness of the 21st century combined with an Indian response to that eternal growing-up classic, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger' THE HINDU'Reminds one of E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, where the most ordinary becomes extraordinary through the writer's craft'-INDIA TODAY'Anees Salim knows how to tell a story . . . A novel of haunting quality . . . Unputdownable'-TIMES OF INDIA