Author:Toni Morrison
Four young women are brutally attacked in a convent near an all-black town in America in the mid-1970s. The inevitability of this attack, and the attempts to avert it, lie at the heart of Paradise.
Spanning the birth of the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, the counter-culture and politics of the late 1970s, deftly manipulating past, present and future, this novel reveals the interior lives of the citizens of the town with astonishing clarity. Starkly evoking the clashes that have bedevilled the American century: between race and racelessness; religion and magic; promiscuity and fidelity; individuality and belonging.
‘When Morrison writes at her best, you can feel the workings of history through her prose’ Hilary Mantel, Spectator
‘Morrison almost single-handedly took American fiction forward in the second half of the 20th century, to a place where it could finally embrace the subtleties and contradictions of the great stain of race which has blighted the republic since its inception’ Caryl Phillips, Guardian
BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF BELOVED
Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction
Toni Morrison makes me believe in God. She makes me believe in a divine being, because luck and genetics don’t seem to come close to explaining her
—— GuardianMorrison is an extraordinary novelist
—— New York TimesWe don't know quite how Toni Morrison does what she does, but we do know we are left shaken as readers and, to a profound degree, changed
—— Washington PostMorrison has brought it all together: the poetry, the emotion, the broad symbolic plan
—— New York Times Book ReviewIt is a tour de force of writing
—— Independent on SundayEntrancing
—— GuardianIn Even the Dead, Black goes beyond the atmospheric stage and scene setting, delving deeper than in any previous novel into the soul of his pathologist hero Quirke, an enigmatic loner whose voice colours every page as if staining it with nicotine
—— Sunday HeraldStep through The Gates of Evangeline with Charlotte Cates, a grief-stricken Northerner tasked with uncovering a Southern dynasty's dark secrets. Hair-raising and heart-rending, Hester Young's first novel is one of buried shame, children taken too soon, and, ultimately, of immense true love that binds across the mortal divide.
—— Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times best-selling author of BittersweetThe hothouse atmosphere of Evangeline and the tortuous and tangled motives of its denizens make for an enjoyable puzzle box of a mystery. An eerie but inviting debut.
—— Kirkus ReviewsIn Hester Young's haunted Louisiana, the ghostly labyrinth of the past opens its great doors to deliver up a lush gothic thriller. The Gates of Evangeline is a darkly marvelous debut, a classic whodunnit stitched with otherworldly chills.
—— Jedediah Berry, author of the Hammett-prize winning The Manual of DetectionA grieving mother but a determined journalist. What a box of mysteries this story is. Life, death, heartache and hope for the future. I loved it. Very much a book you don’t want to put down. A fabulous first novel. I hope this is the first of many, particularly if ‘Charlie Cates’ is involved.
—— Mojo MumsYoung’s The Gates of Evangeline is a stunning debut novel. A lyrical, haunting, heart-wrenching work of suspense with echoes of du Maurier, Hitchcock, and King.
—— Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times bestselling author of Robert B. Parker’s The Devil WinsHaunting, heartbreaking, yet ultimately hopeful...Young handles the spectral elements with restraint as her tremendously sympathetic heroine seeks to build a new life after death.
—— Publishers WeeklyA dreamy, Southern gothic mystery…Young’s novel is powerful and captivating.
—— New Orleans MagazineA dangerously good thriller
—— Wegener Dagbladen (Holland)This thriller gets under your skin and won't let you go. One thing is very clear at the end: we want to read more about Holger Munch and Mia Krüger!
—— Booksection.de (Germany)A very sophisticated and terrifying thriller, which keeps the reader guessing and gasping to the very last page. The story is powerful, the style is fluent, and the cast of characters is simply irresistible
—— Thrillermagazine.it (Italy)