From the Nobel Prize winner, a coming-of-age story that illuminates the harshness and beauty of an Africa on the brink of colonization
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, Paradise was characterized by the Nobel Prize committee as Abdulrazak Gurnahโs โbreakthroughโ work. It is at once the chronicle of an African boyโs coming-of-age, a tragic love story, and a tale of the corruption of African tradition by European colonialism.
Sold by his father in repayment of a debt, twelve-year-old Yusuf is thrown from his simple rural life into complexities of pre-colonial urban East Africa. Through Yusufโs eyes, Gurnah depicts communities at war, trading safaris gone awry, and the universal trials of adolescence. The result is what Publishers Weekly calls a โvibrantโ and โpowerfulโ work that โevokes the Edenic natural beauty of a continent on the verge of full-scale imperialist takeover.โ