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