Here in this prison, could be paradise...

Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Paradise is a beautiful and deep novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah. The story revolves around Yusuf, a young boy from East Africa (present day Tanzania), away from his family. Yusuf’s life sometimes takes a train, sometimes a caravan, stalls here and there. He is always a passive character among many others. Gurnah presents the world around a character who has almost no action in it. And maybe that echoes so many other lives lived in Africa to this date.

The passiveness of the story and real life like boringness makes the book a little uninteresting to read, at times. I liked to discover early 20th East Africa through Gurnah’s prose. Along with Yusuf, the book takes you to a tour of pre-colonial Africa where you see its jungles, mountains, streams, its walled gardens, tribes, trades, caravans, traditions and superstitions too. A hotpot of cultures—Africans, Arabs, Indians and the newly arrived Germans—the most exciting of them all, we see them through Yusuf’s eyes.

The title Paradise is especially powerful because it is almost ironic. Yusuf moves through gardens, beauty, desire, and a world full of rich sensory details, yet beneath that beauty lies debt, servitude, possession, and violence. His “paradise” is not really free; it is a beautiful prison.

The story of Yusuf reminds you of the story of prophet Yusuf: a beautiful young boy taken from his family, desired by others, and trapped within powerful households.

For me, the passiveness of Yusuf’s life also echoed real life. The novel asks quietly but painfully: what does a beautiful, sensitive person become when every system around him treats people as possessions?


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