Paradise
First edition
AuthorAbdulrazak Gurnah
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHamish Hamilton
Publication date
1994
Media typePrint (hardcover, paperback)
Pages256
ISBN9780747573999
Preceded byDottie 
Followed byAdmiring Silence 

Paradise is a historical novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Zanzibar-born British writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1994 by Hamish Hamilton in London. 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 20th 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 the interior to the lands west of Lake Tanganyika.[3]: 178  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 Yusuf encounters the German Army as they sweep Tanzania, forcibly conscripting African men as soldiers.

Literary genealogy

Heart of Darkness

Johan Jacobs[lower-alpha 1] claims that Gurnah is writing back to Joseph Conrad's 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.[5]: 81  James Hodapp explicitly rejected this interpretation,[6]: 89 calling Jacobs's approach "Eurocentric" and saying that he was "ignoring non-European influences almost entirely".[6]: 106 

Early Swahili prose

In one scene,[7]: 104–105  Yusuf is serving a group of visitors and listening to their stories in the evening. One visitor relates to the incredulous audience that his uncle travelled to St. Petersburg in the "country of the Rusi", where "the sun shone until midnight" and where the people "were not civilized". This "clearly alludes" to Salim bin Abakari's late 19th-century travel memoir Safari Yangu ya Urusi na ya Siberia (My Journey to Russia and Siberia), written in the late 19th century.[6]: 90 

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".[8]

In 2022, Paradise was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.[9]

Translation

Following the receipt of the Nobel Prize, Paradise was Gurnah's first book to be translated to Swahili, the language spoken in Tanzania. The translation, titled Peponi, was done by Ida Hadjivayanis, a senior lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London in 2022, and published by Mkuki na Nyota in Tanzania.[10]

Publication history

Notes

  1. ↑ As of 2022, professor emeritus at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.[4] In the bibliography, Deandrea gives his first name as Johan.[3]: 182 

References

  1. ↑ "The Booker Prize 1994". The Booker Prizes. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  2. ↑ "A Note on the Author." In Desertion, by Abdulrazak Gurnah, 263. London: Bloomsbury, 2006.
  3. 1 2 Deandrea, Pietro (2009). "Dark Paradises: David Dabydeen's and Abdulrazak Gurnah's Postcolonial Rewritings of Heart of Darkness". In Letissier, Georges (ed.). Rewriting/Reprising: Plural Intertextualities. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 167–182. ISBN 9781443816144.
  4. ↑ "Research • English Studies (Durban)". Retrieved 10 February 2022.
  5. ↑ Jacobs, J. U. (2009). "Trading Places in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise". English Studies in Africa. 52 (2): 77–88. doi:10.1080/00138390903444164. S2CID 162019886.
  6. 1 2 3 Hodapp, James (2015). "Imagining Unmediated Early Swahili Narratives in Abdulrazak Gurnah's 'Paradise.'". English in Africa. Rhodes University. 42 (2): 89–107. doi:10.4314/eia.v42i2.5. JSTOR 26359419.
  7. ↑ Gurnah, Abdulrazak (1994). Paradise. Hamish Hamilton. ISBN 9780747573999.
  8. ↑ Mason, Anita (13 March 1994). "BOOK REVIEW / Of earthly delights: 'Paradise' - Abdulrazak Gurnah". The Independent. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  9. ↑ "The Big Jubilee Read: A literary celebration of Queen Elizabeth II's record-breaking reign". BBC. 17 April 2022. Retrieved 18 June 2022.
  10. ↑ "BARAZA: Swahili studies conference 2022". SOAS. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
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