Book Club Guide

Paradise

by Abdulrazak Gurnah · 1994 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

East Africa before the European conquest — and the older forms of domination it already contained
The slave trade routes that predate colonialism
The boy between worlds — belonging nowhere

About this book

Yusuf is taken by his merchant father as payment of a debt to the wealthy trader Uncle Aziz, and travels with him through East Africa at the beginning of the 20th century. Gurnah's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel draws on the Quranic story of the Garden of Eden and Joseph and his brothers, examining colonialism, slavery and the African world the European encounter destroyed.

Published in 1994, Paradise was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and is now considered one of the foundational texts of postcolonial African fiction in English. Gurnah was born in Zanzibar and has lived in England since 1968.

Discussion questions

Yusuf is not quite a slave but not quite free — his position is legally and morally ambiguous in ways the novel doesn't resolve. How does Gurnah use this ambiguity?
The novel is set in the Swahili Coast interior trade routes before significant European penetration. How does Gurnah use this specific historical moment — what is being lost that is not Western?
The title invokes both the Biblical Paradise and the Islamic garden. How does Gurnah develop this layered reference — and what does paradise mean in this context?
Gurnah is interested in the multiplicity of colonialisms — Arab, Swahili, Indian as well as European. How does this complexity serve the novel — and what does it ask of the reader?
Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021. What in Paradise earns this recognition — and how does it develop the concerns about colonialism, displacement and belonging that characterise his work?