The Road to the Salt Sea
As wrenching and luminous as Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, a searing exploration of the global migration crisis that moves from Nigeria to Libya to Italy, from an exciting new literary voice.
Able God works for low pay at a four-star hotel where he must flash his “toothpaste-white smile” for wealthy guests. When not tending to the hotel’s overprivileged clientele, he muses over self-help books and draws life lessons from the game of chess.
But Able’s ordinary life is upended when an early morning room service order leads him to interfere with Akudo, a sex worker involved with a powerful but dangerous hotel guest. Suddenly caught in a web of violence, guilt, and fear, Able must run to save himself—a journey that leads him into the desert with a group of drug-addled migrants, headed by a charismatic religious leader calling himself Ben Ten. The travelers’ dream of reaching Europe and a new life in a better place is shattered when they fall prey to human traffickers, suffer starvation, and find themselves on the precipice of death, fighting for their lives and their freedom.
As Able God moves into the treacherous unknown, his consciousness becomes focused on survival and the foundations of his beliefs—his ideas about betterment and salvation—are forever altered. Suspenseful, incisive, and illuminating, The Road to the Salt Sea is a story of family, fate, religion, survival, the failures of the Nigerian class system, and what often happens to those who seek their fortunes elsewhere.
Praise for The Road to the Salt Sea
“In his fine debut novel, The Road to the Salt Sea, Samuel Kolawole gifts us the story of Able God, a conflicted but determined young Nigerian man who makes the dangerous journey from West Africa to Libya, where he crosses the treacherous waters of the Mediterranean. In bringing to life Able God’s story, Kolawole shows us why African lives matter and shows us that the continent teems with millions of Able Gods, people full of promise and potential who can help build a better world.”
— Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Fat Time and Other Stories and Song of the Shank
“The Road to the Salt Sea is a stirring odyssey through the global migration crisis, from Nigeria to distant shores, where dreams collide with a brutal reality. Able God is a luminous and complex character who you will not soon forget.”
— Jai Chakrabarti, winner of the National Jewish Book Award and PEN-nominated author of A Play for the End of the World and A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness
“Heart-breaking and educational, The Road to the Salt Sea is an unforgettable and moving tale of what it takes to survive with dignity and to make this tumulus, unfair world our home.”
— Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, international bestselling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child