To Paradise

"This expansive novel exploring American identity and the pursuit of utopia across three centuries fits Barack Obama's interest in historical fiction that grapples with complex social themes."

"Hanya Yanagihara, author of the heartbreaking and critically acclaimed bestseller A Little Life , is imminently to publish To Paradise, her third novel. Yanagihara’s new book is set in an alternate world, one in which the American Civil War has produced a continent of rival territories—a Disunited States. It’s divided into three parts, each a hundred years apart. The final instalment takes place in a dystopic 2093 as pandemics sweep the world. Characters appear and reappear in different guises, changing ethnicity and gender. It’s a novel of huge ambition, and one likely to arouse a great deal of critical attention; already the Guardian has called it “impressive” and “significant”, the New York Times warned it “simultaneously bedazzle[s] and befuddle[s]”. To Paradise is the novel everyone will be talking about in spring 2022. Monica Ali (author of the Booker-shortlisted Brick Lane ) will publish her long-awaited fifth novel Love Marriage here in the UK in February and in the US in May. Karen Joy Fowler ( The Jane Austen Book Club , We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves ) will return with Booth, a fictional account of the life of John Wilkes Booth, the stage actor and Confederate sympathiser who assassinated Abraham Lincoln—and those of his his many theatrical siblings."

"From the author of A Little Life comes another long and riveting novel. To Paradise reads like three novels in one, each section taking place in a different time: an alternate 19th century, the 1990s, and a possible future. As for place, all three sections live in and around the same house on Washington Square Park in New York City. Exploring characters who believe they are good, their semi-doomed love affairs, and the freedoms given and curtailed in their various timelines, this novel is sweeping, lush, and gorgeously written."