Armies, like writers, prey on orphans and misfits. Scenes of military recruitment have been a literary staple at least since Bulgarian soldiers kidnapped Voltaire’s Candide, but few are more bleakly memorable than the one at the end of “Paradise” (1994), by the novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah. It’s around the time of the First World War. Yusuf, a runaway servant in what’s now Tanzania,…
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