Paraíso / Paradise

About Paraíso / Paradise

Una historia de iniciación que ilumina la crudeza y la belleza de la África precolonial, por el premio Nobel de literatura 2021.

Cuando los padres de Yusuf, de doce años, le dicen que vivirá con su tío Aziz durante una temporada, el chico se muestra entusiasmado. Pero lo que Yusuf no sabe es que su padre lo ha empeñado para saldar una deuda imposible de pagar, ni tampoco que Aziz no es pariente suyo, sino un rico y acaudalado comerciante con el que viajará por África central y las riberas del Congo en vísperas de la primera guerra mundial. A través de los ojos de ese chiquillo descubriremos una naturaleza exuberante y hostil, poblada de tribus despiadadas e invasores desalmados, en la que una vida humana vale tanto como unas cuantas gotas de agua. 

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

“[Gurnah’s novels] recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world.” —Nobel Committee for Literature at the Swedish Academy

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.”