Paraso / Paradise

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

Cuando los padres de Yusuf, de doce aos, le dicen que vivir con su to Aziz durante una temporada, el chico se muestra entusiasmado. Pero lo que Yusuf no sabe es que su padre lo ha empeado para saldar una deuda imposible de pagar, ni tampoco que Aziz no es pariente suyo, sino un rico y acaudalado comerciante con el que viajar por frica central y las riberas del Congo en vsperas de la primera guerra mundial. A travs 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

“[Gurnahs 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 Gurnahs breakthrough work. It is at once the chronicle of an African boys 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 Yusufs 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.