Paradise - Abdulrazak Gurnah

Category: Adults, Contemporary, Historical Fiction, Novel
Language: English
Keywords: 20th Century Africa African Literature Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Literature Nobel Prize Novels Tanzania

Written by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Read by Chukwudi Iwuji
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

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 Gurnah’s “breakthrough” work. It is at once the chronicle of an African boy’s 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 Yusuf’s eyes, Gurnah depicts communities at war, trading safaris gone awry, and the universal trials of adolescence. The result is what Publishers Weekly calls a “vibrant” and “powerful” work that “evokes the Edenic natural beauty of a continent on the verge of full-scale imperialist takeover.”

Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
Release date: 03-07-23