The politics of storytelling

2Right from the beginning of Paradise, the reader understands that the story will be told through “the narrow subjective vision of young Yusuf,” as explained by Jacqueline Bardolph, who adds that “his emotions are evoked indirectly by the way his sense of smell reacts to people and places” (Bardolph 1997, 79). In fact, all of Yusuf’s senses are involved in perceiving and decoding his environment, as shown by the frequent combination of verbs referring to perception, but also to interpretation. The references to Yusuf’s sight and hearing suggest that he is more passive than active, a spectator of other people’s lives. This is established from the first pages: in the opening of the novel, sight plays a prominent part in the description of the two Europeans at the station, who are described from Yusuf’s point of view as he tries to decode their appearance. This immediately prepares the reader for the novel, in which the world is mostly seen and interpreted from Yusuf’s perspective – a privileged one, as Khalil observes in chapter 5: “You look at everyone, at everything. […] Who doesn’t know this? And anyone can see that your miserable eyes are open and that you desire nothing to escape them.” (Gurnah 1994, 194)

replicated in Gurnah’s construction of the silent Yusuf. Like Aziz, the boy observes much but says little and ironically, this silence is interpreted by the others as the silence of the visionary. Yusuf is clearly the moral centre of the narrative, unconsciously directing the gaze of the others inward. (1997, 97)

4But Yusuf’s supposedly visionary perception of the world and of the people around him “is undermined by his tendency to rely on storytelling to understand the surrounding world and his own life” (Mondo 2023, 177). Indeed, very often, Yusuf’s perceptions are shown to be influenced or guided by storytelling – something that is not specific to him, since, as Mondo reminds us, storytelling is “rooted in a socio-cultural physical reality,” “a means by which people can reach an understanding of changes – in this case the arrival of the Europeans – or at least approach what they do not know or what scares them” (2023, 177–78). Such a strategy recurs quite often in the novel, and reflects Gurnah’s own description of literature’s capacity to inform readers: “there is also news in the literature,” “it brings you news that you have no way of receiving” (Gurnah 2024, 12). In Paradise, the capacity of fiction to inform readers is evinced by the tales told by the travellers when they come back from their journeys, for instance the traders who pass through the mountain town where Yusuf stays with Hamid and his family: “The travellers brought news with them and incredible stories of daring and fortitude on the journeys. A few people from the town came to share their company and listen to the travellers” (Gurnah 1994, 71). In spite of the mixture of realism and fantasy pointed out by the contrast between “news” and “incredible stories,” this exemplifies the way in which storytelling can be informative and thus participates in Yusuf’s education.

5It also reflects the fact that Yusuf’s taste for storytelling is grounded in “fairy tale motifs and myths,” not just factual reports:

it is Yusuf himself who longs to hear stories and encase the reality he experiences within them. To him, stories may seem to provide a blueprint for numerous situations and he therefore draws on them to understand the surrounding world. […] Not only does Yusuf associate reality with stories, he even intermingles and switches them, so that life becomes a story and has a fully-fledged denouement. (Mondo 2024, 179)

6A good example, Mondo explains, is the story of the jinn and the princess, which is used as a “blueprint” to shape the budding love story between Yusuf and Amina. Mondo insists on the learning process involved in reading the world through the prism of stories, which participates, I argue, in the educational dimension of the novel. What Yusuf also develops, however, is “the awareness that reality and stories do not always dovetail. Life proves much harsher than fairy tales and undercuts idealized notions of paradise” (Mondo 2024, 181).

7Yusuf is often described listening to stories, interacting with storytellers. Again, this is established from the beginning with Mohammed, the beggar: “Yusuf was always glad to see him and hear about his latest adventures” (Gurnah 1994, 10). Mohammed himself insists on the educational dimension of his own story: “Learn from my terrible example,” he repeatedly tells Yusuf (10–11). This situation is echoed later when Yusuf himself becomes a “terrible example” for Hamid’s children, after it is revealed that he cannot read the Koran properly: “‘Children, look at him. Learn from the sight he presents to us,’ [Hamid] said in the end, flinging out an arm to point at Yusuf. Shun the weed, I beg you. Learn from my terrible example” (100; original emphasis). The italicized reference to Mohammed’s words draws an explicit parallel between the two situations, even if this time, Yusuf is not taught but has become teaching material – a reversal he is aware of, since the italicized sentence can be read as a transcription of his thoughts, a memory from his own childhood.

8Mohammed’s stories are not the only ones with a didactic purpose. Uncle Aziz also teaches Yusuf by telling him stories, to help him understand the world around him and the complex history of East Africa (131–33). Aziz himself insists on his stories’ educational purpose and on transmission, as shown a few pages later when he says, “Bring the scholar so he can learn how to greet the owners of the land” (138; original emphasis).

10Yet, if stories become a reading grid, and provide a new perspective on East African history, they have their limits. For instance, the story of the jinn and the princess (Gurnah 1994, 188), which becomes a pattern for Yusuf’s story with Amina, is not in fact the most appropriate one, as a scared Khalil tells him: “This is not a fairy tale. There are still many things here you don’t understand” (216). And yet, the same Khalil cannot resist telling the story to his customers after the resolution of the plot and Uncle Aziz’s forgiveness:

Khalil announced their double wedding to the customers, inviting them to the feast their seyyid had promised them. […] Yusuf smiled with everyone else. It was impossible not to, as Khalil invented and embellished with frenzied abandon. When the customers asked Yusuf for corroboration, he told them that Khalil’s mind had cracked. “He’s delirious from fever,” he said. “Take no notice of him. Otherwise you’ll make him nervous and then he’ll get worse”. (Gurnah 1994, 243)

11This scene shows the process of reinvention involved in telling stories about what happened, but also the role of the interaction between the storyteller and his audience: this calls for a closer analysis of staging and theatricality.

Performance and power: subverting hierarchies

12Yusuf’s internal focalization is often replaced by, or complemented with, direct speech and conversations between the characters. This, Berman argues, lays emphasis on affects and emotions:

Gurnah’s narratological choices emphasize affect as a key aspect to understanding Yusuf’s development. The third-person omniscient narrator often uses direct speech to highlight the emotional dimension of the interactions between the main characters. Questions are asked, desires stated, commands given, and commands questioned. The high number of exclamatory, interrogative, and imperative sentences conveys the emotional intensity of the novel’s plot, and stresses the necessity to understand emotion as a central driving force of action. Introspective passages communicate Yusuf’s thought processes throughout the novel, allowing the reader to follow the process of his maturation and development toward agency. (Berman 2013, 53)

14In this society, most of the characters’ lives are public, so that “[n]othing is hidden from the gaze of others: love or lust can give rise to malicious mockery, women being as bawdy as men in their jeering” (Bardolph 1997, 81). Whether it is in public or in private places, the interactions between the characters reflect a “hierarchically structured world” (Schwerdt 1997, 100) and the power relations are staged through allusions to theatricality or performance.

15Theatricality often recurs in the same circumstances, whether it concerns places or people. One of these places is the store where Yusuf works with Khalil after he is taken from his parents. The first example occurs in the first chapter, just after Yusuf’s arrival, setting the tone for ulterior reiterations. Khalil bursts into Arabic in the middle of one of his rants, which makes Yusuf laugh, leading Khalil to slap him. This interaction is described like a short scene, with spectators:

The old men on the terrace laughed at that, chortling and rocking and giving each other knowing looks, as if they had known all along that this was bound to happen. They came every day and sat on the bench, talking among themselves and smiling at Khalil’s antics. When there were no customers Khalil turned his attention fully on them, transforming them into a chorus to his antic rantings, interrupting their low-voiced exchange of news and rumours of war with unavoidable questions and fertile insights. (Gurnah 1994, 23)

16Here, the narrator uses the lexical field of the theatre and Khalil is depicted as an actor, performing for an audience who have expectations and whose reactions are reported in a detailed way pointing to the comedic dimension of the exchange. This type of scene sets the tone for the interactions between these protagonists, and recurs repeatedly, for instance when Khalil explains that he can improve his mastery of Swahili thanks to Yusuf and “get himself a plump Mswahili wife and live a God-fearing life.” This is immediately followed by the suggestion that Khalil is trying to conform to his audience’s expectations: “[t]he old men on the terrace loved talk of plump young wives, and Khalil was happy to oblige them” (Gurnah 1994, 30). Not only does he remain the comic character that they perceive him to be, he also adapts his performance depending on their reactions and interactions: “The customers made him repeat words and phrases that they expected him to have trouble with, and Khalil repeated them as carelessly as he could, and then joined in the laughter, his eyes blazing with joy” (30). The recurrence of the word “repeat” shows the causal relationship between the customers’ expectations and the performance.

17The shop becomes the locus of various theatrical interactions, often comedic, like the frequent exchanges between Yusuf and Ma Ajuza, depicted as performances characterized by a sense of repetition and exaggeration, and by the interaction between actors and their audience:

Whenever she trapped him, she swooped on him with wild cries while her body shook in paroxysms of trembling and sneezing. She smelt of the tobacco she chewed and her embraces and shouts were embarrassing. Everyone seemed to find the business funny – although Yusuf could not see the joke – so they always told Ma Ajuza where he was hiding. (Gurnah 1994, 31)

18Once again, the narration describes the attitudes and tones of the actors and the comedic dimension of Ma Ajuza’s performance, but also the fact that this is meant for an audience who appreciate the show. The “old men on the terrace” are often mentioned as spectators of what is happening (Gurnah 1994, 32) and they sometimes become storytellers, swapping roles with those who are usually the actors: “But if he could bear with their talk of the tortures of declining bodies, he would hear stories of other journeys, and watch as the old men forgot themselves in the excitement of these new preparations” (45). This points to the interdependence between actors and audience, between listening and watching, and the co-construction of narratives by writers and readers.

19Interestingly, the comedic exchanges between Yusuf and Ma Ajuza are replicated later in the novel, when the interactions between Yusuf and Bati at Chatu’s court are told in a comedic tone and always witnessed by spectators who express their appreciation at the show:

Yusuf saw now that whenever Bati approached him, people watching exchanged looks and smiled. […] All of the next day he could not keep his mind away from the girl. And every time he caught sight of her he could not hide a grin. The women clapped and called out when they saw them, laughing at the comedy. (Gurnah 1994, 168)

20Similarly, after Bati visits Yusuf at night and leaves in the morning, she performs the moment of separation for the benefit of the female spectators: “She looked over her shoulder at him, and the women laughed at her display of how everything was between them” (Gurnah 1994, 169). This suggests that Yusuf, because he is a subaltern, does not have a private life: what should remain intimate and secret, his love life (real or imagined), is always turned into a public performance – even later, when he is invited inside the mistress’s house.

21At the shop, the roles are not fixed, and some characters can in turn be actors or spectators. For instance, when Khalil and Yusuf narrate their adventures in town, and in particular the game of kipande, which is turned into a “heroic performance” (Gurnah 1994, 41), the tone is once again increasingly comedic, turning the game into an epic feat whose scale increases with each retelling:

Khalil exaggerated Yusuf’s exploits with every telling and made his own part sound more and more clownish. In his usual way with the customers, he played everything for laughs, especially if there were any girls or young women around. […] Ma Ajuza exclaimed and applauded at all the appropriate places […] and came after him. The customers and the old men on the terrace cheered and laughed, egging Ma Ajuza on”. (Gurnah 1994, 41)

22Ma Ajuza, first a spectator of Khalil’s performance, then becomes an actor and plays her usual role, “coming after” Yusuf. This example reflects the tension between performing and watching, and the interdependence between the two roles. It sheds light on Yusuf’s own position in society, where he is alternately actor and, more often so, spectator, and where what he observes might help him gain some agency.

23The performances occurring at different places and involving different characters also create echoes and symmetries between them. For instance, the pleasure Khalil expresses at being a performer, which is shared by his audience (“as much pleasure as they did,” Gurnah 1994, 50), is echoed by Kalasinga’s attitude when he tells stories. Kalasinga’s tales about his sexual adventures, for instance, are characterized by a similarly comedic and playful dimension:

His emphasis was on the ridiculous. […] He acted out all the parts, softening his voice, loosening his body, disjointing his limbs. In between, when he was himself, his beard bristled and his turban straightened as he became the rampant janab single-mindedly in search of action. (Gurnah 1994, 86)

24Here, Kalasinga multiplies the possibilities; the performance involves both his voice and body, which both transform rapidly to mimic the conversations he is reporting. As with Khalil, the narrative lays emphasis on the reactions of the audience and on the way in which the performance adapts to them:

Hamid hooted and howled with laughter, holding his ribs and panting for air when he was overcome. Kalasinga tortured him when he could, repeating the scenes which Hamid had shown himself unable to resist. Yusuf laughed guiltily at it all because he could see that Hussein did not approve of the dirty talk, but the sight of Hamid writhing in comic agony was too much for him. (Gurnah 1994, 86)

25While the performer plays on the expectations of the audience, the performance involves the bodies of all those involved, Hamid’s breathlessness and “writhing into agony” being shown as resulting directly from Kalasinga’s “loosening his body, disjointing his limbs.” The same kind of interaction is shown again when Kalasinga is alone with Yusuf:

Kalasinga told him stories about saints and battles and love-smitten gods, and statuesque heroes and mustachioed villains while Yusuf sat on a box and applauded. He played the parts himself, sometimes calling upon Yusuf to stand in for a silent prince or a cowering offender. Often he could not remember important details, so he adapted and perverted to hilarious effect. (Gurnah 1994, 103–4)

26Here the performance points to the transformation of narratives in oral transmission based on the expectations of the spectators, which might constitute a metafictional comment on Gurnah’s part and a suggestion that writing and storytelling in general are characterized by a sense of appropriation and transformation of previous texts in new contexts. It also points to what Gurnah himself does in Paradise by writing back to a diversity of hypotexts ranging from Swahili narratives to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Interestingly, one of the signs that Yusuf has grown up is expressed through his more mature interpretation of these performances after the Chatu episode:

For a start he ain’t your uncle. He thought of Khalil and smiled despite the gloom and the sudden sense of self-pity he felt. […] He thought of his ceaseless banter with the customers, and his impossible cheerfulness, and knew that it only disguised hidden wounds. Like Kalasinga, a thousand miles from home. Like all of them, stuck in one smelly place or another, infested by longing and comforted by visions of lost wholeness. (Gurnah 1994, 175)

27Yusuf explicitly links Khalil and Kalasinga’s comedic performances but also understands that playing the clown may have darker implications – maybe the only roles the highly hierarchized East African society assigns them.

29This corresponds, more generally, to a strategy which seems recurrent in the novel, in which various performances and/or their interpretations provide possibilities to contest power and regain agency. Nyundo’s repeated imitations of Mohammed Abdalla, for instance, evince how role-playing, and in particular comedic performances, can become a strategy to challenge authority: “When Mohammed Abdalla and Simba Mwene stood together, Nyundo placed himself out of the mnyapara’s eye-line and mimicked him, provoking the other porters to laughter and glaring at those who did not find his antics amusing.” (Gurnah 1994, 118) Here the strategic positioning of Nyundo “out of the mnyapara’s eye-line” but in the porters’ field of vision evinces his strategic identification of the audience members who will appreciate his performance. Later, Mohammed Abdalla dances and is, again, parodied by Nyundo, with exaggeration and bawdy allusions (“so that it looked obscene” 135). This time, though, Mohammed Abdalla becomes part of the audience: “While everyone laughed at this satirical display, the mnyapara stood at the edges of the light, watching them.” (135) This evolution of the spectators targeted by the performance suggests a carnivalesque intention, linked to the subversive power of (temporary) carnivalesque role-playing. Because the mnyapara is in a position of power, mimicking him becomes an act of subversion and contestation, even if short-lived.

30The subversive power of performance is also linked to the fact that power relations themselves are performed – that is, each participant in social relations plays a part which is predetermined and corresponds to their position. For example, when Aziz and his men become Chatu’s prisoners, they become a spectacle for the local population: “the townspeople came to look at the captives, laughing and throwing stones at them. They kept an eye on them all morning, neglecting their affairs and watching the knot of huddled men as if they expected them to do something strange or unexpected” (Gurnah 1994, 159). Here, the social interactions and the imbalance in power relations are depicted through the prism of theatricality. The lexical field of sight shows how the audience constructs a common interpretation of the prisoners, turning them into a comic, and thus inferior, object of laughter. Interestingly, the narrative voice also suggests that the townspeople have expectations about the “actors” they are watching. It can be argued that the community’s cohesion is ensured by a common interpretation of the same narrative – here, the “spectacle” offered by the prisoners. Similarly, when Mohammed Abdalla is beaten by Chatu’s men, the scene is described as a show, watched by an appreciative audience, a parallel drawn once again by Gurnah’s use of the lexical field of performance:

The crowd’s glee drowned any noise the mnyapara made, making his convulsions seem like mute play-acting. […] Yusuf saw that tears were running down Uncle Aziz’s face.

Chatu spoke again. The crowd groaned with disappointment, and some of the elders shook their heads in dissent. Chatu spoke again, raising his voice against the murmur of dissent. (Gurnah 1994, 161)

31Here, the variations in the crowd’s attitude reflect the complex nature of communication and negotiations in a context where exchanges are often public, and translated, and thus become complex performances. This complexity is also made visible by the slightly different configuration in the next section, with a different audience and therefore a different kind of performance: “There were no crowds in Chatu’s courtyard this time, but the elders still sat on the terrace […]. Perhaps they always sat there, Yusuf thought, like the old men at the shop” (Gurnah 1994, 164). The parallel with “the old men at the shop” draws attention to their function as audience and to the theatricality of the exchange. It also suggests a form of continuity in the staging of interactions in the novel, beyond obvious contextual differences between the two situations: many characters perform in front of others to either provoke reactions in their audience or assert their power. Even the German officer who solves the dispute offers a performance, while pointedly ignoring the spectators: “He washed himself thoroughly, as if he was on his own and not surrounded by hundreds of people” (170). In spite of this, his action has a very real impact on the audience watching him. When the negotiations also begin, translated by Nyundo, the reaction of the various audiences is reported, for instance when the German officer rebukes Chatu: “Nyundo translated these words in a shout, making the merchant’s men cheer.” (170) The reaction of Aziz’s men shows the way in which the balance of power has shifted. Similarly, when the interpreter answers that the German officer will make Chatu “eat shit” if he does not comply with his decision, “The merchant’s men br[eak] into shouts of jubilation and mockery, yelling abuse at Chatu and praying that God should damn him and his town.” (171)

32This resonates with Judith Butler’s influential theory of identity as performance, which points out the interdependence of language and identity in the construction of gender (Butler 1990). Butler argues that “what we perceive as an ‘internal’ feature of our identity is something actively anticipated and produced through bodily acts” (Kakoliris 2025, 62), “at an extreme, an hallucinatory effect of naturalized gestures” (Butler 1990, xv). Elaborating on Butler’s analysis of masculinity as performance, Kakoliris explains that “behaviours or gestures that appear to signify ‘masculinity’ are not mere expressions of an underlying male identity. Instead, these actions, through their repeated performance, actively generate that identity. Male identity, therefore, does not pre-exist its effects; it is itself an effect” (Kakoliris 2025, 62). A similar point could be made about the interdependence between performances of power or submission in Paradise. While characters belonging to inferior categories, Khalil or Kalasinga for instance, adopt behaviours which both reflect their positions in society and consolidate them, powerful people’s performances both assert and reinforce their superior status. This suggests that one of the functions of the numerous performances in the novel is to point to the multiple communities coexisting, but also competing, in the hierarchized East African society, but also to identify mechanisms of interaction which shed indirect light on the creative process.

Interpretation: individuals and communities

33In Paradise, theatrical interactions and storytelling become a way of connecting or, on the contrary, separating people, which reflects Gurnah’s project to show a society which is “already at full stretch” before the arrival of the colonizers: “I didn’t simply want to say, ‘Look, it worked before the European colonial encounter’ but instead, ‘Look how hard it had to try to work and look at the kind of things it had to do to make itself work” (Gurnah 2004, 361). The oral interactions participate in this attempt at making society work in spite of its hierarchized and unequal nature.

34In Paradise, friendship is repeatedly described as being based on trading stories. When Yusuf and Khalil visit the town every Friday, their interactions with the fishermen consist in trading stories to create social links: “they exchanged tales of memorable battles they had fought against powerful and brave foes” (Gurnah 1994, 50). This corresponds to the idea that “Forging and cementing communities is another meaningful role of storytelling. As a matter of fact, stories are entwined with values and customs that can be transmitted to future generations” (Mondo 2023, 178), a process which works both on the individual and collective levels. Thus, when Khalil and Yusuf become an audience “as they watched the dismissal of Mohamed Abdalla,” (Gurnah 1994, 185) the connection between the two young men is strengthened.

36This phenomenon is also reported through storytelling, as explained by Bardolph, who argues that stories also participate in the elaboration of an oral history constructing identities and cementing communities:

The model of the narrative is not just the accounts by Swahili travellers, but the stories which are continually exchanged in the society. Men in Africa are shown as creating their own history all the time and not just as objects for foreign explorers. They are curious about other cultures and wonderful events, so storytelling and discussions about foreign lands and past times occupy an important place in the novel. […] Paradise is an account of the making of history, a kind of history close to The Histories of Herodotus, mixing exact first-hand accounts with strange wonders. (1997, 80)

37This is illustrated when Simba Mwene tells stories to the other members of the caravan: “The largest gathering was around Simba Mwene, who reclined against sacks while the crowd around him leaned forward to listen to his stories of the Germans” (Gurnah 1994, 115). Storytelling thus appears as a privileged way of transmitting knowledge (“news”) and understanding how the world is changing. The process is also appropriated and parodied by Mohammed Abdalla: “The stories we hear about them!,” he tells Yusuf, inventing stories in which the Europeans appear as mythical and strange beings, possibly “jinns, for God made them out of fire” (120). But Yusuf understands that these stories must not all be taken at face value: “Yusuf understood that the mnyapara was making fun of him and saw a smile on the corners of Uncle Aziz’s mouth” (120). Here, the story is adapted to fit with the listener’s expectations, not actual “truth,” thus displaying a tension between “news” and invention. Yet, the story does convey an underlying truth, the ongoing shift in the balance of power as the European colonizers now control the area. It also becomes a way of negotiating the relationships between individuals, but also between members of the community – hence the ritualized nature of the process: “In the evenings after they had made camp and built a stockade of bushes against attack from animals, the men sat in groups and told stories. […] When [Yusuf] sat with them in the evening, they made room for him and included him in their talk” (134–35). Storytelling is performed “in groups” and becomes a factor of inclusion, an inclusion reinforced by the way in which the members of the group interpret the stories – hence the need to go back to Hamid and Kalasinga (Gurnah 1994, 74–75; 84): in both cases, the narrative insists on the audience’s expectations and the way in which the two men adapt to them, which is staged through questions and answers. Such interactions are a way of staging the interaction between “writers” and “readers” who share the same worldview and interpret stories in the same way.

38In that sense, the emphasis on storytelling in Paradise suggests an equivalence between communities and “interpretive communities” as defined by Stanley Fish, that is, people who “share interpretive strategies” (1980, 14). Fish insists on the interdependence between the individual and the collective levels: “since the thoughts an individual can think and the mental operations he can perform have their source in some or other interpretive community, he is as much a product of that community (acting as an extension of it) as the meanings it enables him to produce” (14).

39Thus, the activity of telling the stories and listening to them participates in (re)establishing a sense of community. This is reinforced by processes of repetition and transmission, as shown by the fact that Yusuf in turn repeats some of Kalasinga’s stories to Hamid’s children to please them (Gurnah 1994, 106–7): “It was Asha who prompted him to tell the stories”; “Tell me again about the gardens in the city” (107). This also seems to illustrate Gurnah’s conception of writing as stemming directly from reading (Gurnah 2024, 11). The listeners’/readers’ expectations also emerge from transmission, as shown early in the novel when Yusuf’s mother tells him stories about his father’s first wife, “recounting the story with smiles and the voice she kept for fables” (Gurnah 1994, 13). These stories cement the family and prepare Yusuf to “read” the world, a process echoed when Khalil tells him about the mistress: “The crazy old woman in the house did not surprise him at all. It was exactly as it would have been in the stories his mother used to tell him. […] He wanted to say that to Khalil. Don’t worry about it so much, it will be put right before the story ends” (38). Stories create expectations, and life is read through the prism of storytelling, which is shown to be a collective process – thus illustrating Gurnah’s conception of writing, seen as a form of (collective) transmission:

But memory is also shared. So I do not just remember for myself, I also remember what people told me, what my parents told me, what elders told me when I was a child. I also remember what I hear now. So a writer then becomes a confluence of all these narrations, narratives, remembered fragments, and so on. And a writer, of course, has his own mind, his own intelligence and his own eyes and ears so he can see and make up his own mind. And all of this come together and produce a little book. (Gurnah 2024, 11)

40What emerges from this depiction of the writer as a kind of crossroads, a “confluence,” is the idea that writing stands at the threshold between the individual and the collective, between self and other, between reading and writing, expressed through the repeated performances and scenes of storytelling.

41This metafictional reflection is reinforced by the fact that the novel also stages the transformation of reality into fiction, visible for instance in the immediate transformation of Chatu into a mythical figure: “The men made up a song about Chatu the python which had been swallowed by a European jinn with hair growing out of his ears, but the forest muted their voices and emptied them of resonance” (Gurnah 1994, 172). This example points to important aspects of fiction-making as staged in Paradise: the real is transformed into “a song,” based on factual elements – echoing the description of the German officer seen from Yusuf’s perspective: “He had never seen anything as strange looking as the shining red man with hair growing out of his ears, he would say later” (170). The collective and retrospective dimension of storytelling and the necessity of an audience is emphasized: the “reader” is absent in the empty forest, emptying the story of its meaning.

42As previously shown, the colonizer becomes a mythical creature whose power is conveyed through storytelling, a process amplified during the return journey: “Everywhere they went they heard stories of the Germans, who had forbidden the people to ask for tribute, and had even hanged some people for reasons no one understood” (Gurnah 1994, 176). The ultimate impossibility of understanding the reasons for the Germans’ behaviour shows how the novel repeatedly suggests the coexistence of different reading grids, pointing to an equivalence between social groups and interpretive communities.

43The transformation of the real into a story is also staged when the caravan finally gets back to its starting point: “The days after their return were crowded with mobs of people circling the house and the clearing, clamouring to be heard. The porters and guards were there too, telling tales of their heroic survival and grumbling about their luck as they waited to be paid off” (Gurnah 1994, 178). As seen earlier in the novel, the old men on the terrace are the audience who want “to stay close to the drama of the merchant’s return” (178) and Yusuf is displayed to the customers, who are “invited to admire the returned traveller” (179). Yet, some changes have occurred, even if the theatrical interactions seem similar: “Ma Ajuza’s jaw dropped with melodramatic amazement when she saw him in the shop. For a long moment she stood still, robbed of words and volition. Then she smiled slowly with pleasure. He saw how heavily she moved and how weary her face looked” (182). Yusuf’s perception of Ma Ajuza’s performance points to the passage of time and to his own maturation, the result of which is that the young man is not only the object of storytelling but also becomes a storyteller, since Khalil wants “to hear everything” (179): “Khalil listened without speaking, occasionally making a hem in support. But when Yusuf stopped, because he guessed that Khalil had dropped off to sleep, a question came out of the dark to prompt him” (180–81). Once again, the interaction between storyteller and listener points to the interdependence between the audience’s expectations and prompts, and the narrative – an interaction which is sometimes refused by the storyteller: asked about the “savages and thieves,” “Yusuf knew that this was how the men prompted each other to tell the story of Chatu once again, but he kept silent” (181). The whole passage plays on the reader’s expectations, as shown by the modal “must,” the references to Khalil’s previous knowledge, which shapes his horizons of expectation, and the accumulation of interrogative sentences: “what did [Mohammed Abdalla] do before that?”, “did you see any wolf-men? You must have. No? Perhaps they wait deeper in the forest. I know they’re famous in that country. Did you see any strange animals?” (181).

44Examining storytelling and storytellers in Paradise shows how connected they are to the historical context in which the novel is grounded, but also to processes of identity-making and fiction-writing that go beyond this immediate context. This does not mean that the context must be ignored, far from it, but that the politics and the poetics of the text are deeply intertwined. Paradoxically, what also matters is what is not said or staged, which may suggest that interaction and conversations have their own limitations, as Gurnah himself explained when Tina Steiner asked him about “gaps, silences, secrets and lies”:

[S]o much is impossible to say in intercourse with other people. It’s just not possible to say things, because it would cause offence, because it would hurt, or because you would be revealing more than you’d want to, and so all the time there is this checking, both of oneself and also of the limits of intercourse and exchange. And I guess, the more you trust, the more you release, the less you trust … So in the first place then, it’s just simply that. It’s a way of saying, this is how we deal with each other: we don’t really open up to each other. We deal with each other in these sort of suppressed exchanges. Does this mean we can’t read what’s going on? We can. (Gurnah 2013, 161)