Open Fiction Book Group October

On Monday, October 23 at 6 PM, the Open Fiction Book Group will  meet to discuss Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah.

About the Book

From the Nobel Prize winner, a coming-of-age story that illuminates the harshness and beauty of an Africa on the brink of colonization

" 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."

About the Author

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948 in Zanzibar and teaches at the University of Kent. He is the author of "Paradise," "Admiring Silence," and "By the Sea," all published by The New Press.

About the Open Fiction Book Group

The Open Fiction Book Group reads one paperback novel a month and its discussions are led by local author Chrysler Szarlan. The group typically meets the fourth Monday of each month at 6 p.m. It's free and everyone is welcome to join.

Each selection of the Open Fiction Book Group discussion group is discounted 20% at the Odyssey Bookshop. Click on the link below to order online. Use code BOOKCLUB to apply the discount at checkout.