Paradise (Abdulrazak Gurnah)

Paradise is a historical novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah. The novel was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Fiction.^[1][2]

Plot

The novel follows the story of Yusuf, a boy born in the fictional town of Kawa in Tanzania at the turn of the Twentieth century. Yusuf's father is a hotelier and is in debt to a rich and powerful Arab merchant named Aziz. Early in the story Yusuf is pawned in exchange for his father's owed debt to Aziz and must work as an unpaid servant for the merchant. Yusuf joins Aziz's caravan as they travel into parts of Central Africa and the Congo Basin that have hitherto not been traded with for many generations. Here, Aziz's caravan of traders meets hostility from local tribes, wild animals and difficult terrain. As the caravan returns to East Africa, World War I begins and Aziz encounters the German Army as they sweep Tanzania, forcibly conscripting African men as soldiers.

Major themes

African literary scholar J U Jacobs writes that Gurnah is writing back to Joseph Conrad's famous 1902 novel Heart Of Darkness. In Aziz's easterly journey to the Congo, Jacobs says that Gurnah is challenging the dominant Western images of the Congo at the turn of the twentieth century that continue to pervade the popular imagination.^[3]

Literary reception

The book was well received on publication. Writing in The Independent, Anita Mason described the novel as 'many-layered, violent, beautiful and strange'.^[4]

Publication history

• 1994, UK, Hamish Hamilton, Hardback
• 2004, UK, Bloomsbury Books, Paperback

References