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This is simply wonderful, but of course not in a way I can capture. Gurnah takes us into the world of caravan trading in what is now Tanzania in southeast Africa, and what was then a cultural mélange, a world of merchants from different parts of Africa, Arabia and India, along with the leftovers around that trade, under German colonial rule. No dates, but there is an automobile, and a war coming; and the traditional ways, along with all their tragedy and risk and romanticism, are coming to an end.

Yusuf (whose significantly biblical name took me about 90% of the book to figure out, because of the spelling) finds himself taken from his parents by a rich uncle, and dumped in a shop, and then later on and off a caravan right out of something Marco Polo might have experienced, but here westward into the very distant heart of Africa. The civilized Islamic traders dealing with isolated pagan Africa tribes. Except this isn't the 1300's. This is a colonial ruled territory in the 20th century. Yusuf grows up, and encounters various characters, and their large personalities, and expounding on their philosophies and playing their tricks and trying to manage the traditions and changes.

My first time reading the new Nobel Prize winner. An LT friend sent this my way in April of 2019, after posting to me in her Club Read thread, "If one is going to try to hook someone on an author, one must do it properly!" It took me over two years and that prize to finally open it up and see what she meant. I'm anxious to read more by Gurnah.

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48. Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
published: 1994
format: 247-page paperback
acquired: 2019 � sent from an LT friend
read: Oct 8-16
time reading: 8:12, 2.0 mpp
rating: 5
locations: circa 1910 Tanzania
about the author: born 1948 in the Sultanate of Zanzibar. Fled to England after the Zanzibar Revolution in 1968. Now a retired professor of English and postcolonial literature at the University of Kent.