Paradise is a historical novel by UK Zanzibar-born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1994. The novel was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Fiction and, this year, Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for his "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents."

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 debt to Aziz and must work as an unpaid servant for the merchant. Yusuf joins Aziz's caravan as they travel into parts of Central Africa and the Congo Basin that have not been traded with for many generations. Here, Aziz's caravan of traders meets hostility from local tribes, wild animals and difficult terrain.

It's both a coming-of-age story and a poetic and powerful portrait set against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.

Abridged by Florence Bedell
Read by Paterson Joseph
Produced by Clive Brill

A Brill production for BBC Radio 4 Show less