PARADISE

246pp., paperback, Reprint, London, (1994) 2004

Abdulrazak Gurnah is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021.

Paradise was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award.

A coming-of-age tale set in East Africa on the eve of colonisation.

Paradise is that rare thing, a novel that is totally convincing in the vivid physical world it presents, yet transcending that world and reaching into the universal. Folk tale, travel story, drama of love and loss, by turns touching and horrifying, it is a novel to be grateful for" Barry Unsworth, author of Sacred Hunger

"An aural archive of a lost Africa ... tangling travel adventures, social documentary, politics indictment and a doomed love story." Sunday Times

“An evocative portrait of Africa on the brink of change ... A poignant meditation on the nature of freedom and the loss of innocence, for both a single sensitive boy and an entire continent.” The New York Times Book Review

Abdulrazak Gurnah is the author of the novels Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Dottie, Gravel Heart, Admiring Silence, By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), Desertion (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize) The Last Gift and Afterlives (shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Fiction 2021 and longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize). He was Professor of English at the University of Kent, and was a Man Booker Prize judge in 2016. He lives in Canterbury.