Way to Paradise, The

by Mario Vargos Llosa (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $51.75

  The dramatic story of the great post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, and his grandmother, Flora Tristan, trail-blazing women's suffragist. Flora, the illegitimate child of a wealthy Peruvian father and French mother, grows up in poverty, and after fleeing a brutal husband, journeys to Peru to demand her inheritance. Paul, a struggling painter, abandons his wife and five children for life in the South Seas, where his dreams of paradise are poisoned by syphilis and a chronic lack of funds, though he has his pick of teenage Tahitian lovers and paints some of his greatest works. Vargas Llosa makes stunning art of their unlikely lives, chronicling their obstinate pursuit of greatness in the face of adventure, illness and death.

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.51

  'In Mario Vargas Llosa's latest novel there are two stories - that of Paul Gauguin, the Post-Impressionist painter, and that of Paul Gauguin's grandmother, Flora Tristan ...what makes the novel so illuminating is the continuity between their parallel lives ...the novel is highly accomplished and teems with characters, ideas and incident - Gauguin and Flora may have thought they were masters of their own destiny, but this novel powerfully suggests that even that may have been an illusion - like paradise itself.' Literary Review 'Vargas Llosa's storytelling gifts are pretty much unrivalled, and they don't desert him this time either. His recreation of the tactile, sensuous, brilliant, whiffy details of the everyday is superb ...a fabulously abundant book.' Financial Times 'The Way to Paradise weaves an extraordinarily rich double fantasia around Gauguin's life, strenuously explores qualities in the works, and sets moral issues in a far wilder, more real historical world ...riveting stuff, beautifully written, wild, exact, and visually stunning.' Independent

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $7.13

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $12.81

  'In Mario Vargas Llosa's latest novel there are two stories - that of Paul Gauguin, the Post-Impressionist painter, and that of Paul Gauguin's grandmother, Flora Tristan ...what makes the novel so illuminating is the continuity between their parallel lives ...the novel is highly accomplished and teems with characters, ideas and incident - Gauguin and Flora may have thought they were masters of their own destiny, but this novel powerfully suggests that even that may have been an illusion - like paradise itself.' Literary Review 'Vargas Llosa's storytelling gifts are pretty much unrivalled, and they don't desert him this time either. His recreation of the tactile, sensuous, brilliant, whiffy details of the everyday is superb ...a fabulously abundant book.' Financial Times 'The Way to Paradise weaves an extraordinarily rich double fantasia around Gauguin's life, strenuously explores qualities in the works, and sets moral issues in a far wilder, more real historical world ...riveting stuff, beautifully written, wild, exact, and visually stunning.' Independent