Al Jubail: The Last Pearl Diver

"A haunting mystery wrapped in the final days of the Gulf pearl trade."Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia. When archivist Amina inherits seven notebooks wrapped in indigo cloth, she expects a cataloguing task. What she finds instead is a mystery sealed since 1935.In the last great season of the Gulf pearl trade, a fleet of divers set out from the coast. A storm. An unmapped island. And a choice made by one man - Hamad al-Safi - that he never came home to explain.Ninety years later, Amina begins to read. Through the parallel journals of a meticulous diver and his watchful wife, she pieces together a story of fraud, sacrifice, and a love so quiet it could only be heard in the archive. At its centre: a single extraordinary pearl, divided in two - and a son who grew up not knowing what his father had given for him.AL JUBAIL: THE LAST PEARL DIVER is a novel about what we keep, what we hide, and what arrives - eventually - when the right person comes looking.