Bloomsbury to Publish Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini and Illustrated by Dan Williams
A heart-wrenching story from the international bestselling author of The Kite Runner
On a moonlit beach a father cradles his sleeping son as they wait for dawn to break and a boat to arrive. He speaks to his boy of the long summers of his childhood, recalling his grandfather’s house in Syria, the stirring of olive trees in the breeze, the bleating of his grandmother’s goat, the clanking of her cooking pots. And he remembers, too, the bustling city of Homs with its crowded lanes, its mosque and grand souk, in the days before the sky spat bombs and they had to flee.
When the sun rises they and those around them will gather their possessions and embark on a perilous sea journey in search of a new home.
- Khaled Hosseini is one of the most widely read and beloved novelists in the world. His books have sold over 8 million copies in UK markets alone, and over 55 million copies in more than 70 countries worldwide
- Impelled to write this story by the haunting image of young Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed upon the beach in Turkey in September 2015, Hosseini hopes to pay tribute to the millions of families, like Kurdi’s, who have been splintered and forced from home by war and persecution.
Reviews
“A truly gifted teller of tales … he’s not afraid to pull every string in your heart to make it sing” – The Times
“Hosseini has that rare thing, a Dickensian knack for storytelling. He excels at writing suspenseful epics filled with compelling characters” – Daily Telegraph
Author Biography
Khaled Hosseini is one of the most widely read and beloved novelists in the world, with over 55 million copies of his books sold in more than 70 countries. The Kite Runner was a major film and was a Book of the Decade, chosen by The Times, Daily Telegraph and Guardian. A Thousand Splendid Suns was the Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year in 2008. And the Mountains Echoed was chosen for the Richard & Judy Summer Book Club in 2014, and readers voted it as their favourite of all the titles. Hosseini is also a Goodwill Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN Refugee Agency and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation which provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. He
was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and lives in northern California.
Dan Williams is a London-based artist whose illustrations accompanied an extract of A Thousand Splendid Suns in the Guardian when it was first published 15 years ago. His work has also appeared in National Geographic, Rolling Stone and the Wall Street Journal, amongst many other publications.