Welcome to Paradise

Welcome to Paradise opens a window into the hearts and minds 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 deeply compassionate, Welcome to Paradise is a striking tale of human desperation and of the media-fuelled fantasies of Western life that rarely fulfil their promise yet hold a fatal allure.

Mahi Binebine is a Moroccan author, painter and sculptor, born in Marrakesh in 1959. He studied mathematics in Paris and taught the subject for eight years before returning to Morocco in 2002. He is the author of six novels, which have been translated into a dozen languages between them, and his paintings are now part of the permanent collection at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.