In Paradise

A Novel

By: Peter Matthiessen

Narrated by: Mark Bramhall

Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

A profoundly searching new novel by a writer of incomparable range, power, and achievement.

In the winter of 1996, more than 100 women and men of diverse nationality, background, and belief gather at the site of a former concentration camp for an unprecedented purpose: a weeklong retreat during which they will offer prayer and witness at the crematoria and meditate in all weathers on the selection platform, while eating and sleeping in the quarters of the Nazi officers who, half a century before, sent more than a million Jews to their deaths.

Clements Olin, an American academic of Polish descent, has come along, ostensibly to complete research on the death of a survivor, even as he questions what a non-Jew can contribute to the understanding of so monstrous a catastrophe. As the days pass, tensions, both political and personal, surface among the participants, stripping away any easy pretense to healing or closure. Finding himself in the grip of emotions and impulses of bewildering intensity, Olin is forced to abandon his observer’s role and to embrace a history his family has long suppressed - and with it the yearnings and contradictions of being fully alive.

In Paradise is a brave and deeply thought-provoking novel by one of our most stunningly accomplished writers.

©2014 Peter Matthiessen (P)2014 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

A Newsweek Best Book of 2014

"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." (The Washington Post)

"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." (The Miami Herald)

I give this book five stars because it is truly an

Matthiessen is the Master who paints with words and reveals an aspect of life that others
only experience when their eyes absorb that gulp of truth so clearly their heart will never be the same .

It is the story of a 1996 gathering of people at Auschwitz. They had come together to pry, meditate,
and contemplate on a deep lever the horrors that had transpired in this place.

Thought-provokingly good

Good story - descriptive and interesting. characters from all different backgrounds, each shining a light (sometimes dim, sometimes bright) onto The Holocaust - what it meant then and what it means now. How each person's life experience colors their reasons for gathering at Auschwitz and their reactions as the week progresses.

Great narration - the characters are from different countries, classes, backgrounds and the narrator successfully navigates each one.