As wrenching and luminous as Omar El Akkadâs What Strange Paradise and Mohsin Hamidâs 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 âtoothpaste-white smileâ for wealthy guests. When not tending to the hotelâs overprivileged clientele, he muses over self-help books and draws life lessons from the game of chess.
But Ableâs 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 himselfâa 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 travelersâ dream of reaching Europeâand a new lifeâis 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 beliefsâhis ideas about betterment and salvationâare 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.