Paradise

 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah is a strange, disturbing, tragic novel. Set in Tanzania during a period of political turmoil and colonization, the story focuses on an innocent named Yusuf. Because he's provincial and naïve, and because it's a close-third person of his travels, the reader doesn't really understand what's happening in the periphery. The narrative becomes increasingly dark. Part of the unease of this text is how wholly alien this world appears to me, a reader in 21st-Century America. In that way, I was reminded of Soul by Andrey Platonov. That book, set in Uzbekistan, seemed like from another planet. But while Soul was peaceful and hypnagogic, the ironically titled Paradise was unsettling and nightmarish.