A shrewd yet soulful novel, Paperless is set in Oxford and revolves around three groups in the university town: the African students who entered the country legally on student visas, the blue-collar South African workers who overstayed their visitor visas and are illegal, and black Britons who are an enigma to the Africans. As the chief protagonist Luzuko Goba navigates these worlds, his relationship with his former political exile father – who has just died – is revealed. This is a book about migrants, legal and illegal, out of time, on the wrong side of the UK’s department of immigration. They are paperless.