Welcome to Paradise - Mahi Binebine

£14.99

Eland are proud to reissue this compassionate novel. First published in French in 1999, but as timely and relevant today, on a subject rarely out of the news. Binebine is one of Morocco’s leading literary voices and artists and we welcome him to the Eland list.

Translated by Lulu Norman

Welcome to Paradise opens a window into the hearts of a small group of African would-be emigrants, waiting on the beach in Morocco for a boat that will take them to a new life in Europe. As we shelter with them in the darkness, we hear of the cruelty, misfortune and grinding poverty which has compelled them here, to pit themselves against the dangers of the sea and the coastguards who patrol it.  Tense, dramatic and blackly compassionate, Welcome to Paradise is a striking tale of human desperation and of the media-fuelled fantasies of Western life that hold a fatal allure.

‘At once sympathetic to a people’s plight and angry with its self-delusions, this is a brave book to have written and a rich, unsettling one to read.’ The Literary Review

‘Binebine’s terse, bleak, compassionate Welcome to Paradise is both topical and rare in tracing the poverty and cruelty emigrants are escaping.’ Financial Times 

Eland are proud to reissue this compassionate novel. First published in French in 1999, but as timely and relevant today, on a subject rarely out of the news. Binebine is one of Morocco’s leading literary voices and artists and we welcome him to the Eland list.

Translated by Lulu Norman

Welcome to Paradise opens a window into the hearts of a small group of African would-be emigrants, waiting on the beach in Morocco for a boat that will take them to a new life in Europe. As we shelter with them in the darkness, we hear of the cruelty, misfortune and grinding poverty which has compelled them here, to pit themselves against the dangers of the sea and the coastguards who patrol it.  Tense, dramatic and blackly compassionate, Welcome to Paradise is a striking tale of human desperation and of the media-fuelled fantasies of Western life that hold a fatal allure.

‘At once sympathetic to a people’s plight and angry with its self-delusions, this is a brave book to have written and a rich, unsettling one to read.’ The Literary Review

‘Binebine’s terse, bleak, compassionate Welcome to Paradise is both topical and rare in tracing the poverty and cruelty emigrants are escaping.’ Financial Times 

Welcome to Paradise
ISBN: 978-1-78060-235-6
Format: 176pp demi pb
Place: Morocco, France

Author Biography

Mahi Binebine is a writer, painter and sculptor, born in Marrakech in 1959. He studied mathematics in Paris and taught the subject for eight years. He lived in New York between 1994 and 1999 when his paintings began to be acquired by the Guggenheim Museum. He returned to Morocco in 2002 and now lives in Marrakech with his family. Mahi has written six novels which have now been translated into more than a dozen languages.