Longlisted for the 2014 Frank O'Connor Award
and the 2014 Giller Prize
“Moody, shape-shifting, provocative and always as compelling as a strong light at the end of a road you hesitate to walk down...but will.”—
Amy Bloom
"Tight, strange, nifty stories."—
Margaret Atwood
The rubble of an ancient civilization. A village in a valley from which no one comes or goes. A forest of mother-trees, whispering to each other through their roots; a lakeside lighthouse where a girl slips into human skin as lightly as an otter into water; a desert settlement where there was no conflict, before she came; or the town of Wantwick, ruled by a soothsayer, where tourists lose everything they have. These are the places where things begin.
New from the author of
The Story of My Face
,
Paradise & Elsewhere
is a collection of dark fables at once familiar and entirely strange: join the Orange Prize-nominated Kathy Page as she notches a new path through the wild, lush, half-fantastic and half-real terrain of fairy tale and myth.
Praise for
“This vibrant, startlingly imaginative collection reminded me—as few collections have done in recent years—of both where stories come from, and why we need to tell them.  Kathy Page is a massive talent:  wise, smart, very funny and very humane.”—
Barbara Gowdy