Children of Paradise - Softcover

D'Aguiar, Fred

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847088619 ISBN 13: 9781847088611

Publisher: Granta Books, 2014

Synopsis

In the opening pages of this novel, an accident brings a young girl to the attention of the Preacher, the all-powerful leader of a religious cult secluded in the jungle. Trina has only dim memories of the life she lived with her mother before they joined the community and the closed, close society is all she knows. When she is singled out for special favour, it becomes clear that the gaze of the Preacher can be a dangerous thing. As the Preacher's behaviour and the demands he places on his followers become more extreme, Trina's mother begins to question her faith in the charismatic but fatally flawed leader and to dream of an escape from his control. In this powerful re-imagining of the infamous Jonestown tragedy, D'Aguiar writes with the lyrical intensity of a poet, examining the motivations and obsessions that lead to religious fanaticism. This is a novel about the betrayal of faith and of innocence, a story about love, devotion and mania that is a brave attempt to understand the reasoning of people who would, in the end, kill their own children in the prelude to a mass suicide that shocked the world. Although history tells us that the ending of this story can never be anything other than a tragedy, D'Aguiar's compassion, and his ability to draw the reader into the intimate and terrible reality of lives lived at the whim of a corrupt and dangerous cult leader, ensure that in the end this is a story of hope.

About this title

Review

'Children of Paradise works as both a warning from history and a tale of slowly-building but inexorable tension' --Herald

'Children of Paradise does deliver... and we are fully immersed in the story of a leader losing his mind, and of a woman and her daughter trying to flee his darkening domain' --Spectator

'Lyrical and haunting' --Metro

'Beautiful and compelling' --Huffington Post

'Lyrical and haunting' --Metro

From the Back Cover

Based on the terrible truths of Jonestown, Jim Jones's utopian commune in Guyana, Children of Paradise is a beautifully imagined novel that interweaves history and fiction to portray a mother and daughter's escape from the rule of a religious madman.

Joyce and her young daughter, Trina, have followed a charismatic preacher from California to the wilds of Guyana, where a thousand congregants have cleared a swath of dense jungle and built a utopian society based on a rigid order guarded over by armed men and teenage "prefects." Each day ends with sermons that demonstrate the preacher's capricious violence and his utmost hostility toward even a whisper of skepticism. But try as the preacher may to block out the world, the commune's seclusion is being breached, first by tribal elders complaining of polluted river water downstream, then by an invisible presence that has helped a young boy to disappear, and finally with rumors of the imminent arrival of a congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission.

As the camp begins rehearsing an endgame of mass suicide, Joyce and Trina attempt a daring escape, aided by a local boat captain and the most unlikely of prisoners--the extraordinary Adam, the commune's caged gorilla.

Told with a sweeping perspective in lush prose, shimmering with magic, and devastating in its clarity, Children of Paradise is a brilliant and evocative exploration of the liberating power of storytelling.

About this edition

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1847088619
• ISBN 13: 9781847088611
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384