The Way to Paradise: A Novel

Front Cover
Macmillan, 2004 - Fiction - 373 pages

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

A New York Times Notable Book

Flora Tristán, the illegitimate child of a wealthy Peruvian father and French mother, grows up in poverty and journeys to Peru to demand her inheritance. On her return in 1844, she makes her name as a champion of the downtrodden, touring the French countryside to recruit members for her Workers' Union.
In 1891, Flora's grandson, struggling painter and stubborn visionary Paul Gauguin, abandons his wife and five children for life in the South Seas, where his dreams of paradise are poisoned by syphilis, the stifling forces of French colonialism, and a chronic lack of funds, though he has his pick of teenage Tahitian lovers and paints some of his greatest works.

Flora died before her grandson was born, but their travels and obsessions unfold side by side in this double portrait, a rare study in passion and ambition, as well as the obstinate pursuit of greatness in the face of illness and death.

 

Selected pages

Contents

FLORA IN AUXERRE
3
THE SPIRIT OF THE DEAD WATCHES
15
BASTARD AND FUGITIVE
37
MYSTERIOUS WATERS
56
THE SHADOW OF CHARLES FOURIER
76
ANNAH FROM JAVA
96
NEWS FROM PERU
115
PORTRAIT OF ALINE GAUGUIN
135
THE NUN GUTIÉRREZ
233
WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL
254
THE BATTLE OF CANGALLO
275
THE HOUSE OF PLEASURE
299
WORDS TO CHANGE THE WORLD
322
THE LATEBLOOMING VICE
341
THE MONSTERCITY
365
THE SORCERER OF HIVA OA
389

THE CROSSING
155
NEVERMORE
176
AREQUIPA
196
WHAT ARE WE?
218
THE LAST BATTLE
411
PINK HORSES
432
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

Mario Vargas Llosa is Peru's foremost author and the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1994 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor, and in 1995 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His many distinguished works include The Storyteller, The Feast of the Goat, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Death in the Andes, In Praise of the Stepmother, The Bad Girl, Conversation in the Cathedral, The Way to Paradise, and The War of the End of the World. He lives in London. Natasha Wimmer is a translator who has worked on Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, for which she was awarded the PEN Translation prize in 2009, and The Savage Detectives. She lives in New York.

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