The Road to the Salt Sea

A Novel

By: Samuel Kolawole

Narrated by: Atta Otigba

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—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.

©2024 Samuel Kolawole (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

A Fast-Paced, Heart-Shredding, Unflinching Migrant Story

Whoa. If you read the news about sub-Saharan African enslavement in Libya or the deaths of African migrants in the waters of Lampedusa, this gripping novel humanizes the headlines. The Road to the Salt Sea reads like a thriller as it immerses us in the anxieties, frustrations, and exploitation of the protagonist Able-God without skipping a beat. As we follow Able-God’s journey from Nigeria to Europe, the horrors of human trafficking and the colorism that fuels African migrant trafficking come into harsh, heartbreaking relief. It’s a powerful and necessary read.

A very important story on the perils of immigration

I loved this book because it is written in such clear and impactful prose, and tells a very important story. I’ve read many books about the plight of immigrants coming from Mexico and Central America, but this was my first about the African experience of immigration to Europe. There is a worldwide immigration crisis and it’s sometimes easy for many comfortable Americans and Europeans to try to ignore the problem. I say “There by the grace of God go I.” The perilous journey the protagonist embarks on, and the people he meets along the way, paint a very vivid portrait of a horrible, grueling journey that all too often ends in death or the enslavement of immigrants. It’s very sad to read that there is an entire industry built around taking advantage of these desperate people and subjecting them to many horrific acts they are already trying to escape, or worse. I will recommend this novel to all my book loving friends.