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The Way to Paradise (Spanish: El paraíso en la otra esquina) is a novel published by Mario Vargas Llosa in 2003.
 1st edition | |
| Author | Mario Vargas Llosa |
|---|---|
| Original title | El paraíso en la otra esquina |
| Translator | Natasha Wimmer |
| Cover artist | Paul Gauguin |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Faber and Faber (Eng. trans.) |
Publication date | 2003 |
| Publication place | United States |
Published in English | 2004 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| ISBN | 978-0-571-22039-7 |
| OCLC | 61263831 |
The novel is a historical double biography of Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin and his grandmother Flora Tristan, one of the founders of feminism. The book is divided into 22 chapters, each alternating narratives of Flora Tristan and Paul Gauguin, the grandson she never knew as he was born after she died. Flora Tristan, illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Peruvian man and a French woman, is repelled by sex, detests her husband, and abandons him to then later fight for women's and workers' rights. The story of Paul Gauguin unfolds along a similar quest for an ideal life. Gauguin abandons his wife and children, and job as a stock-broker in Paris, to pursue his passion for painting. In the process he does his best to distances himself from European civilization, fleeing to Tahiti and French Polynesia for inspiration. The contrasts and similarities between two lives attempting to break free from conventional society present a long, elegant development.
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Written in Spanish the English translation was by Natasha Wimmer and was published by Faber and Faber in 2004.[1] The French translation by Albert Bensoussan is called Le Paradis, un peu plus loin. It has also been translated into German by Elke Wehr as Das Paradies ist anderswo. In Spanish, the book's title literally means: "The Paradise in the Other Corner". In Bulgarian, the title is "Рая зад другия ъгъл".
The New York Times listed The Way to Paradise as a Notable Book of the Year. In 2010, Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- William Somerset Maugham's 1919 novel The Moon and Sixpence is also based on the life of Paul Gauguin.
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