In Paradise: A Novel Audiobook

Quotes

• “In Paradise is a fitting final addition to Matthiessen’s oeuvre, in that it combines moral seriousness and imagination grounded in the world with elegance of expression and a willingness to take risk.”

  — National Geographic

• “Peter Matthiessen’s In Paradise is a deeply intelligent study of Holocaust remembrance…bleakly funny [and] eloquent.”

  — Wall Street Journal

• “A fitting coda to [Matthiessen’s] career…Where better to look for some sort of human essence than in a landscape that embodies us at our worst?…This is the key message of Matthiessen’s life and writing—that we are intricate, thorny, inconsistent, that the lines between good and bad blur within us, that we are capable of anything. The only choice is to remain conscious, to engage with openness.”

  — Los Angeles Times

• “Matthiessen’s descriptions are poetic and scarifying…He creates indelible vignettes about what remains and what took place here. Like the rest of Matthiessen’s vast body of work, In Paradise leads us into questions that define our most profound mysteries.”

  — Washington Post

• “The conflict between the drama of the self and its surrender in the shadow of the Holocaust is Matthiessen’s bold subject…Powerful.”

  — New York Review of Books

• “A novel that is as profound as anything that Matthiessen has written before.”

  — Amazon.com, editorial review

• “[In Paradise]…provides rare insight into the dark magnetism of a brutal landmark. What drives a survivor to return? What inspires conflicted visitors to join hands in spontaneous dancing? Matthiessen’s courage and clarity in addressing this topic [were] signal virtues of his career.”

  — Newsday

• “The beauty of [In Paradise] comes in [Matthiessen’s] powerful descriptions. With his command of the language, he can add something new and profound to that vast library of Holocaust literature. In Paradise allows Peter Matthiessen to once again demonstrate that he remains one of our most powerful writers.”

  — Miami Herald

• “An earnest, informed, often insightful and…subtle novel.”

  — Christian Science Monitor

• “Not a mere recounting but a persuasive meditation on Auschwitz’s history and mythology, this novel from three-time National Book Award–winner Matthiessen uses scenes of confrontation, recollection, bitterness, and self-examination to trace aspects of culture that led to the Holocaust and that still reverberate today.”

  — Library Journal (starred review)

• “What makes Matthiessen’s latest stand out from the scores of other Holocaust books is that Olin, a non-Jewish academic of Polish descent, is aware of the vast Holocaust literature—and feels self-doubt to the point of defeat about what he’s doing in Auschwitz in the first place.”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “Matthiessen…ponders Auschwitz decades after the Holocaust, in a novel that’s philosophical, mordant, and surprisingly romantic…An admirable…study of the meaning of survivorship.”

  — Kirkus Reviews