Paradise and Elsewhere

Nominated for the 2014 Giller Prize

The rubble of an ancient civilization. A village in a valley from which no one comes or goes. A forest of mother-trees, whispering to each other through their roots; a lakeside lighthouse where a girl slips into human skin as lightly as an otter into water; a desert settlement where there was no conflict, before she came; or the town of Wantwick, ruled by a soothsayer, where tourists lose everything they have. These are the places where things begin.  

New from the author of The Story of My Face and Alphabet, Paradise & Elsewhere is a collection of dark fables at once familiar and entirely strange: join the Orange Prize-nominated Kathy Page as she notches a new path through the wild, lush, half-fantastic and half-real terrain of fairy tale and myth.    

Praise for Paradise & Elsewhere

"Moody, shape-shifting, provocative and always as compelling as a strong light at the end of a road you hesitate to walk down... but will."-Amy Bloom

"This vibrant, startlingly imaginative collection reminded me-as few collections have done in recent years-of both where stories come from, and why we need to tell them.  Kathy Page is a massive talent:  wise, smart, very funny and very humane."-Barbara Gowdy

Praise for Kathy Page

"Marvellously well-crafted ... I can't remember the last time I was so compelled, impressed and unsettled."-Sarah Waters  

"One of our most daring writers ... If you don't know Page's work yet, she's a find."-Caroline Adderson  

"Softly painterly, sharply filmic or as murky as those first television images of the moon landing."- Times Literary Supplement