Sea Prayer is the slender yet powerful new title by Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner which, along with his books And The Mountains Echoed and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has sold more than 55 million copies all over the world.
Brief but beautiful, it is an elegy for a life left behind as a family flee war in their native Syria.
Hosseini has written Sea Prayer as a father’s prayer for his young son as they lie on a moonlit beach waiting for a boat to ferry them to a new country.
In it, he shows his talent to channel the power of literature towards capturing the emotions of global tragedies.
In The Kite Runner, it was the war in Afghanistan and in Sea Prayer, it is the uprooting of individuals behind headlines which show bombed buildings, death and destruction in that Middle-Eastern land.
Hosseini notes, in fact, that the prayer was triggered off by the death of one Syrian child in particular: three-year-old Alan (or Aylan) Kurdi whose picture was shown around the world.
The stark image of the toddler’s body on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea gave many a human face for the conflict there.
However, it has not stopped the displacement because, as Hosseini notes, the following year more than 4,000 others died or went missing in attempting the sea crossing.
The colour wash illustrations by Dan Williams are as much a part of the prayer as the words, painted with a light touch in a subtle palette and leaving an impression that is somber yet resonant.
The text was first published online by the Guardian newspaper in 2017 and has only now reached book form. With fewer than 50 pages, it’s the sign of a masterful writer that so small a volume can leave such a deep mark.
Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini is published by Bloomsbury, and retails for around R290. Bloomsbury has committed to donate £1 from each sale to the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.