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Harbor by Lorraine Adams

Fiction. Published March 2006.
Paperback original (198 x 129mm).
£7.99. 304 pages.
ISBN: 1 84627 034 0

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Winner of the LA Times Book Prize

After 52 days in the hold of a tanker from Algeria, a young stowaway jumps into the icy waters of Boston Harbor and swims to shore. Frozen and hungry, Aziz scrabbles to make contact with the one person he knows in America and manages to find shelter

within a small enclave of fellow immigrants, where he quickly learns that the normal rules don't apply to those who have no legal existence, and the best way to survive sometimes means turning a blind eye.

But even as Aziz allows himself to forget the atrocities he fled back home and imagine a brighter future, the FBI start taking an interest in his friends' activities and all assumptions – his and ours – dissolve into urgent, mesmerizing questions: How are terrorists identified? Who watches them and decides when to act? How do they live in our midst and how do they evade us? No more timely or more searching novel from America will be published this year, and seldom does any debut novel display Harbor's level of empathy, reach and power.

Watch Lorraine Adams introduce her Orange Prize long-listed debut Harbor. (Windows Media File, 5MB)