This Other Eden

This Other Eden

Shortlisted for The Booker Prize 2023

Summary

'Masterful . . . has much to say to our times' Guardian

'Begs to be read' Spectator


'A luminous, thought-provoking novel' Esi Edugyan, author of Washington Black

In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. More than a century later, the Honeys' descendants remain, with an eccentric, diverse band of neighbours. But during one tumultuous summer at the dawn of the twentieth century, one prejudiced missionary lands on the island's shores, disrupting the community's fragile balance with everlasting consequences.

Full of lyricism and power, Paul Harding's This Other Eden explores the hopes and dreams and resilience of those seen not to fit a world brutally intolerant of difference.

Reviews

  • The Pulitzer prize-winning author's gifts have found their fullest expression . . . [This Other Eden] impresses time and again because of the depth of Harding's sentences, their breathless angelic light
    Observer

About the author

Paul Harding

Paul Harding is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tinkers, and Enon. He teaches at the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook University, and lives on Long Island, New York.
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