Thoughts about the ending of Esi Edugyan's George Washington Black

A number of puzzling and unexpected aspects to the ending of Esi Edugyan's novel George Washington Black (2018). I get that EE is working toward the symbolism of having the novel end of all places in the Moroccan desert, where the eponymous narrator at last tracks down his mentor and one-time companion, Titch, who had abandoned him in the Arctic. I have to say that the final chapters feel rushed and, even for this peripatetic novel, improbable, but she's earned my trust enough I'll shrug and go along w/ as GWB and his beloved Tanna follow a series of clues that lead them to Amsterdam and finally to Morocco. EE shows her fantastic writing ability once again in the Morocco scenes, that really seem to capture the look and feel of this place, from what I know from family and friends who've been there, and she gets in some other fine scenes along the way, notably the death by hanging of GWB's antagonist, the slave-catcher Willard - though that does feel like a plot element EE just had to dispense w/ one way or another, as we know nothing of his capture, for ex. She has a lot of i's to dot/t's to cross at this point in the narration - and GWB's final mentor, Goff, seems crowded out and even Tanna feels peripheral by the end. Who expected this Dickensian novel to end up feeling like a Paul Bowles novel? Not I! So what does happen at the end? GWB does seem to recognize that Titch used him for his own needs and didn't feel the same love and loyalty that GWB felt; there's a hint, too, of child sexual abuse, as another young black boy now appears once again in Titch's life in the desert. Most of all GWB recognizes that he has been and will always be marginal and exploited, that he will never get the credit he deserves for his scientific projects - and there's a sense at the very end that he abandons Tanna in a desert sandstorm just as Titch has abandoned him in an Arctic snow squall (which does not explain how or where GWB could write this manuscript). In any event, despite these quibbles, it's a startling book start to finish and evidence of a descriptive talent far and above most other young writers today; it will be fun to see EE's works develop and evolve.