THE STRONG DEBUT FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE PIRATE’S DAUGHTER
The True History of Paradise: A Novel
By Margaret Cezair-Thompson
“Authentic. . .convincing. . .Cezair-Thompson writes with talent, grace, and confidence.”
–New York Times Book Review
“A heartbreakingly rich, beautiful story whose characters hauntingly embody their country's travail. A very accomplished debut.” –Kirkus Reviews
“[Cezair-Thompson’s] eye for the intersection of personal and public crises proves impeccable…
Diligently researched.…marvelously evocative.” –Washington Post
“A strong debut....robust and authentic....Cezair-Thompson depicts with vivid
immediacy Jamaica's terrors and seductions.” –Publishers Weekly
"A brilliant, sophisticated piece of fiction...
a vivid and evocative work that fully lives up to its title." – Islands Magazine
When The True History of Paradise(Random House Trade Paperback; On-sale date: July 14, 2009) was first published in 1999, it received rave reviews and in 2001, was shortlisted for The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, one of the world’s largest and richest literary prizes for works of fiction.
Easter 1981. With Jamaica in a state of national emergency, the Landing family gathers to bury one of its own. For Monica Landing, who had not spoken to her daughter in fifteen years, the violent death of Lana is the cruelest kind of loss. For Lana's younger sister, Jean, it is an incomprehensible tragedy. All Jean knows is that her beloved homeland, with its exuberant flora and rich African rhythms, holds no future for her.
But flight means crossing a landscape where soldiers have turned into executioners and armed gangs rule; it means making her way through memories that engulf her, with a good man, perhaps the only man she’s ever loved, by her side, caught up in his own tormented memories of Jean’s beautiful sister. In this time of destruction, past and present merge in Jean's remembrances of childhood; in the guiding visions that have always been with her; in the voices of her ancestors that tell of hardship and struggle, love and survival …voices of both the living and the dead. Told from multiple perspectives, The True History of Paradise captures the grace, beauty, and brutality that are indelible parts of the Jamaican experience. The story of three women born into a divided, troubled paradise becomes the history of a country, of generations of wanderers coming together in a place that can neither sustain nor be sustained by them, but which will shape them forever.
