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This Other Eden

The lyrical historical novel, shortlisted for The Booker Prize

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This Other Eden

By: Paul Harding
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
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Brought to you by Penguin.

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.



'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

©2023 Paul Harding (P)2023 Penguin Audio

 African American Family Life Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Fiction
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Critic 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
Masterful . . . This Other Eden is a story of good intentions, bad faith, worse science, but also a tribute to community and human dignity and the possibility of another world. In both, it has much to say to our times
Harding's new novel is suffused with the tremulous imagery and soaring imagination that won him the Pulitzer Prize . . . Exquisite (Financial Times)
Masterful . . . This Other Eden is a story of good intentions, bad faith, worse science, but also a tribute to community and human dignity and the possibility of another world. In both, it has much to say to our times.
Harding's new novel is suffused with the tremulous imagery and soaring imagination that won him the Pulitzer Prize . . . Exquisite.
Rich and full-bodied in its lyricism, Harding's novel, too, is part warning, part memorial, but perhaps above all, reinforces the power of art to bring us into sympathy with strangers' lives.
Harding invites comparisons with authors such as William Faulkner, Robinson and even Elizabeth Strout . . . This Other Eden . . . begs to be widely read.
This Other Eden is ultimately a testament of love: love of kin, love of nature, love of art, love of self, love of home . . . The humans he has created are, thankfully, not flattened into props and gimmicks, which sometimes happens when writers work across time and difference; instead they pulse with aliveness, dreamlike but tangible, so real it could make you weep.
Powerful . . . a moving indictment of a shocking episode in America's past that is rendered in lyrical prose.
[Harding] writes with the gravitas of a mythmaker . . . The pace of Harding's storytelling is stately, his descriptions, even of small events, gorgeous . . . This Other Eden is beautiful and agonizing.
All stars
Most relevant
An extremely poignant story, made even more hard to grasp as it is based (loosely) on real events.

So beautiful and haunting

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This book was so beautiful, not only did I listen to it, I wanted to read and savour each word. This book will join my list of beloved stories. Bravo Mr Harding; a feat like no other.

Lyrical, spellbinding and disconsolate tale of historical fiction

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I enjoyed this book, which is based on true events. It is beautifully written with lovely descriptive writing about an interesting group of people who formed a small society based on tolerance. How the ‘authorities’ eventually reacted to this is a tale for our times from which we should have learned much.

A Story of Hope and Social Bigotry in early 20th century America

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Wow what an incredible novel, one of the best I’ve read so far this year

Incredible

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Slow moving, detailed account of the limited lives of a small group of mixed race islanders living in abject poverty. Interventions by do-gooder outsiders, alongside others with racist and eugenic values, ultimately destroy the community.

Short, harrowing tale

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