Sarah A Smith
Forbidden Dreams
Welcome To Paradise
By Mahi Binebine, Lulu Norman (trans.)
Grant Books 181pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
IT IS ALWAYS a thrill when a talented foreign writer breaks into the Anglocentric world of British publishing. The Moroccan writer and painter Mahi Binebine has finally done so with his fourth novel, Welcome to Paradise. Savage, compelling and painfully timely (Binebine's subject is illegal immigration), it takes us into the world of a group of people most readers will only know from news coverage.
First published in France in 1999, with the rather more emotive title Cannibales, this is the story of seven disparate people, by turns hopeful and desperate, who have gathered on the coast outside Tangier. Having been wooed by Momo, a fast-talking trafficker, they are waiting on the beach for a sign
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Tickets are now on sale for @Poetry_London's 100th issue launch @natpoetrylib as part of the #LondonLitFest on 23 Oct. Hear live readings from an array of brilliant poets in an event that draws on the 33-year history of the magazine.
https://southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/literature-poetry/npl-presents-poetry-londons-100th-issue?eventId=882035
You only have a week left to take advantage of our 500th-issue subscription offer.
Get 5 issues for £5 now.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/lr545/
Joanna Kavenna reviews Maggie Nelson's ‘On Freedom’, ‘a very serious and beautiful book about why “freedom” has become such a vexed term, deployed so often in scenarios where it really means the opposite’.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/in-defence-of-ambivalence