Cover of Welcome to Paradise

Welcome to Paradise

Mahi Binebine's courageous novel takes place in Morocco, where seven would-be immigrants gather one night near the Strait of Gibraltar to wait for a signal from a trafficker that it is time to cross. While they wait, their stories unfold: Kacem Judi is an escapee from the civil war in Algeria; Nuara, with her newborn child, hopes to find her husband, who hasn't been in touch for months since moving to France; and Aziz, the young narrator, and his cousin Reda are severed, in different ways, from their families in southern Morocco. They all share a longing to escape and a readiness to risk everything. Welcome to Paradise delves into a world that most readers know only from stories on the nightly news, delivering a compassionate and striking portrait of human desperation.

Setting
1990sMorocco
Subject
travel
Audience
adult
Length
short · 176 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Welcome to Paradise? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Welcome to Paradise. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Morocco That Was Shares Morocco, travel
  2. The Road from Morocco Shares Morocco, travel
  3. The Sickness Shares fiction
  4. Snowball's Chance Shares fiction

“People who read Welcome to Paradise tend to reach for these next.”

  1. With the Animals
  2. La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams
  3. You Are Not Like Other Mothers
  4. Masters of the Dew (Caribbean Writers Series)

“If you want more of the same (travel), start with these.”

  1. Free onlineFree In Morocco
  2. In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams
  3. Hideous Kinky
  4. A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco

“If it was the Morocco that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Lords of the Atlas: The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua, 1893-1956
  2. A Year in Marrakesh
  3. Year of the Elephant: A Moroccan Woman's Journey Toward Independence
  4. The Spider's House

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. The Flag of Childhood: Poems From the Middle East
  2. Julia's Mother: Life Lessons in the Pediatric ER
  3. At the Crossroads
  4. Running Home