First Impression Friday will be a meme where you talk about a book that you JUST STARTED! Maybe you’re only a chapter or two in, maybe a little farther. Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.

Synopsis:

Born in East Africa, Yusuf has few qualms about the journey he is to make. It never occurs to him to ask why he is accompanying Uncle Aziz or why the trip has been organised so suddenly, and he does not think to ask when he will be returning. But the truth is that his ‘uncle’ is a rich and powerful merchant and Yusuf has been pawned to him to pay his father’s debts. Paradise is the story of Yusuf’s coming of age against the backdrop of an Africa of myth, dreams and Biblical and Koranic tradition, growing corrupt with violence and the influence of colonialism.

Happy Friday everyone! That is another work week in the books. I hope that you ended the week on a high note. Personally, the week was rather uneventful. That was until today. We received a letter of authority from our tax authority requiring us to submit several documents. This is a letter I dread whenever I receive one. Moreover, this is the first one for our company. This also means that the possibility of us receiving more letters in the next two years is rather high. I guess I will be quite busy in the coming week; just when I thought I can slow down as I am already done with the monthly reports. Anyway, I hope everyone’s week went well. If it went the other way around, I hope that you will spend the weekend recovering. I hope you get your groove back. More importantly, I hope everyone is doing well, in body, mind, and spirit.

To cap another week of blogging, I will be sharing a fresh First Impression Friday update. After spending two months journeying across the Asian continent for the best of its works of literature, I am now embarking on a journey across the African continent. Like Asian literature, my foray into African literature is quite limited. As such, I have been hosting African literature month. The first time I held an African literature month was back in February 2020. However, I wasn’t able to host one last year; the last time I did was back on March 2021. Nearly a year and a half later, I am back to the vast African continent.

I am already now on my third book this month, Nobel Laureate in Literature Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise. This is the fourth consecutive novel I read that was written by a Nobel Laureate in Literature; I concluded my Asian literature month with Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague while I opened August with two novels by Naguib Mahfouz: Palace of Desire and Sugar Street. Actually, I just finished reading Sugar Street earlier today which means I have now completed Mafhouz’s magnum opus, The Cairo Trilogy. Paradise, meanwhile, is my second novel by the 2021 awardee, after Afterlives which I read back in December 2022.

To be honest, I was surprised when Gurnah was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was a writer I have never heard of previously. I guess this is one of the good things about the prestigious prize: it introduces me to writers whose oeuvre I would not have thought of exploring. After the announcement, I resolved to read Gurnah’s works. One of his works I was able to obtain first was Paradise. I was hoping to read it last year but then Afterlives arrived and it was more recent. Nevertheless, after being put on hold for a year and a half, I am now reading Paradise. Interestingly, I read another book titled Paradise which was written by another Nobel Laureate in Literature, Toni Morrison.

I just started reading Paradise although the opening pages already acquainted me with the book’s primary character, Yusuf. Yusuf was born in the fictional town of Kawa in Tanzania at the turn of the 20th century. This is an important piece of information because Gurnah was born in Tanzania before he moved to the United Kingdom as a refugee during the Zanzibar revolution. Moreover, an important aspect of his body of work is its exploration of his birth nation’s history, particularly its colonialist past. The Swedish Academy, in its citation of Gurnah, lauded him for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.

The exploration of the region’s colonialist past was also palpable in Afterlives. As such, I am not expecting much deviation in Paradise. If there is one thing I noted about Afterlives it is that Gurnah’s works are rarely uneventful. I am expecting nothing less in Gurnah’s fourth novel. I am even more excited about the book because it is the book that launched Gurnah to global recognition. Published in 1994, it is considered by many a literary pundit as his literary breakthrough. It earned Gurnah several accolades, with the book being shortlisted for prestigious literary prizes such as the Booker, the Whitbread, and the Writers’ Guild Prizes.

I can’t wait to see how the story pans out. How about you fellow reader? What book or books are you taking with you for the weekend? I hope you get to enjoy them. Again, happy weekend everyone!