Paradise and Elsewhere

Longlisted for the 2014 Frank O'Connor Award

and the 2014 Giller Prize "Moody, shape-shifting, provocative and always as compelling as a strong light at the end of a road you hesitate to walk down...but will."--Amy Bloom "Tight, strange, nifty stories."--Margaret Atwood The rubble of an ancient civilization. A village in a valley from which no one comes or goes. A forest of mother-trees, whispering to each other through their roots; a lakeside lighthouse where a girl slips into human skin as lightly as an otter into water; a desert settlement where there was no conflict, before she came; or the town of Wantwick, ruled by a soothsayer, where tourists lose everything they have. These are the places where things begin. New from the author of The Story of My Face, Paradise & Elsewhere is a collection of dark fables at once familiar and entirely strange: join the Orange Prize-nominated Kathy Page as she notches a new path through the wild, lush, half-fantastic and half-real terrain of fairy tale and myth. Praise for Paradise & Elsewhere "This vibrant, startlingly imaginative collection reminded me--as few collections have done in recent years--of both where stories come from, and why we need to tell them. Kathy Page is a massive talent: wise, smart, very funny and very humane."--Barbara Gowdy