In Paradise Hardcover – Deckle Edge, April 8, 2014

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, April 2014: Peter Matthiessen, three-time National Book Award winner and esteemed author of both fiction and nonfiction, has never backed away from writing about difficult subjects. In his new novel In Paradise, he sets his story in the mid-'90s at a spiritual retreat at Auschwitz. The novel centers around Clements Olin, an American academic of Polish decent who has traveled to the concentration camp for reasons both spiritual and personal. While Olin makes his own journey, dealing with the bouts of sadness, horror, and absurdity--and even occasional joy--that accompany such a retreat, we are introduced to a group of characters all experiencing their own version of observance and remembrance. The result is a novel that is as profound as anything that Matthiessen has written before. --Chris Schluep

Praise for Peter Matthiessen:

“You could well school yourself as a young American writer, in the early 21st century, by reading and then rereading the works of Peter Matthiessen. But of course he wasn't just a writer's writer; he was for all readers. He was for the world.” --National Geographic

Praise for IN PARADISE:

“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

“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 “Peter Matthiessen's In Paradise is a deeply intelligent study of Holocaust remembrance… bleakly funny… [and] eloquent” --The 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

“Written with a young man’s energy, In Paradise possesses an old man’s wisdom, which eschews the presumptions of age and the easy attainment of certitude." –The Daily Beast “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

“[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

“In Paradise is…contemplative and moving, and in its haunting story of Holocaust survivors who revisit Auschwitz, we find one of the last century’s greatest authors penning a book worthy of his legacy.” --Grantland

“Matthiessen’s writing flexes the same kind of muscularity as others of his generation— Vonnegut, Styron, Doctorow—but his devotion to Zen Buddhism results in a spiritual journey that’s palatable even to the non-spiritual… [his characters] are fully realized people, and within them are the kernels of horror and joy shared by all of humanity” --A.V. Club

“Matthiessen can write with ecstatic beauty… In his new novel, In Paradise, he takes what may be his deepest look yet into the abyss…Profound and fiercely fresh.” --Tampa Bay Times

"An ambitious tale that tries to do nothing less than achieve some understanding of 20th century Europe’s defining event, the Holocaust.” --Buffalo News

“An eloquently written and thought-provoking novel… In Paradise demonstrates that Peter Matthiessen remained a vital part of America’s contemporary literary scene, an unflinching original who continued to write provocative narratives.” --Counterpunch

“Short and austere… Clements’ story and those of the others are anguished inquiries, harrowing reassessments and attempts — emotional, artistic and spiritual — to grasp the ungraspable.” --Minneapolis Star Tribune

“[In Paradise] deftly and ruthlessly pursues the battles that we face, both individually and also in dialogue with others, when we try to engage with horrors that can never be named.” --The Jewish Book Council

“An earnest, informed, often insightful and…subtle novel.” --Christian Science Monitor

“Contains some of the most frightening and passionate writing of Matthiessen’s long career … With In Paradise, Peter Matthiessen has created philosophical and moral cacophony of lasting worth and, indeed, of a strange power. It belongs on the shelf beside At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Far Tortuga, and Shadow Country. Of how many books can that be said?” --Open Letters Monthly

"Not a mere recounting but a persuasive meditation on Auschwitz’s history and mythology...Matthiessen uses scenes of confrontation, recollection, bitterness, and selfexamination to trace aspects of culture that led to the Holocaust and that still reverberate today." --Library Journal (starred review)

"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

*Starred Review* After participating in three Zen retreats at Auschwitz, Matthiessen addresses that experience with what, at 86, may very well be his final novel. With In Paradise, the two-time National Book Award–winner doesn’t shy away from boldly tackling the most profound of subjects. And as protagonist Clements Olin wonders, what “fresh insights into the horror of the camps” remain to be had, especially from someone without direct experience of the camp? Olin, a Polish-born American scholar and “Holocaust authority,” joins an ecumenical group that includes Germans, Poles, Israelis, Jews, Catholic nuns, and Zen Buddhists at the death camp for “a fortnight of homage, prayer, and silent meditation . . . to bear witness lest the world forget man’s depthless capacity for evil.” Some attend to alleviate shame or guilt, while others are tourists and Holocaust voyeurs and still others are looking for some sort of closure or healing. But earnestness is overrun with grievances as, Olin observes, “behind all the good will, there are so many old hates.” Arguments, accusations, and old resentments erupt, disrupting any silent meditation. Olin’s motivations for attending are initially obscure, but we learn that his family might not all have escaped to the U.S. when the Nazis came to power in Poland. Matthiessen expertly raises the challenges and the difficulties inherent in addressing this subject matter, proving, as the muralist Malan says, that the creation of art “is the only path that might lead toward the apprehension of that ultimate evil . . . that the only way to understand such evil is to reimagine it.” HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The world-renowned naturalist and author Peter Matthiessen, in his first work of fiction since the 2008 National Book Award winner, Shadow Country, pens what may be the 86-year-old author’s “last word” in this powerful novel about the Holocaust. --Ben Segedin