The Way to Paradise

2003 novel by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Way to Paradise

1st edition

Author| Mario Vargas Llosa
Original title| El paraíso en la otra esquina
Translator| Natasha Wimmer
Cover artist| Paul Gauguin
Country| United States
Language| Spanish
Genre| Historical novel
Publisher| Faber and Faber (Eng. trans.)

Publication date

| 2003

Published in English

| 2004
Media type| Print (Paperback)
ISBN| 978-0-571-22039-7
OCLC| 61263831

The Way to Paradise (Spanish: El paraíso en la otra esquina) is a novel published by Mario Vargas Llosa in 2003.

The novel is a historical double biography of Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin and his grandmother Flora Tristan, one of the founders of feminism. The book is divided into 22 chapters, each alternating narratives of Flora Tristan and Paul Gauguin, the grandson she never knew as he was born after she died. Flora Tristan, illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Peruvian man and a French woman, is repelled by sex, detests her husband, and abandons him to then later fight for women's and workers' rights. The story of Paul Gauguin unfolds along a similar quest for an ideal life. Gauguin abandons his wife and children, and job as a stock-broker in Paris, to pursue his passion for painting. In the process he does his best to distances himself from European civilization, fleeing to Tahiti and French Polynesia for inspiration. The contrasts and similarities between two lives attempting to break free from conventional society present a long, elegant development.

## Translations[edit]

Written in Spanish the English translation was by Natasha Wimmer and was published by Faber and Faber in 2004.[1] The French translation by Albert Bensoussan is called Le Paradis, un peu plus loin. It has also been translated into German by Elke Wehr as Das Paradies ist anderswo. In Spanish, the book's title literally means: "The Paradise in the Other Corner". In Bulgarian, the title is "Рая зад другия ъгъл".

## Awards and honors[edit]

The New York Times listed The Way to Paradise as a Notable Book of the Year. In 2010, Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

## See also[edit]

* William Somerset Maugham's 1919 novel The Moon and Sixpence is also based on the life of Paul Gauguin.

## References[edit]

1. ^ "Faber publicity page".

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Works by Mario Vargas Llosa

Novels|

* The Time of the Hero (1963)
* The Green House (1966)
* Conversation in the Cathedral (1969)
* Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973)
* Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977)
* The War of the End of the World (1981)
* The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (1984)
* Who Killed Palomino Molero? (1986)
* The Storyteller (1987)
* In Praise of the Stepmother (1988)
* Death in the Andes (1993)
* The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1997)
* The Feast of the Goat (2000)
* The Way to Paradise (2003)
* The Bad Girl (2006)
* The Dream of the Celt (2010)
* The Discreet Hero (2013)
* The Neighborhood (2016)
* Harsh Times (2019)

Short story collection|

* The Cubs and Other Stories (1959)

Essays|

* The Basis for Interpretation of Rubén Darío (1958)
* The Perpetual Orgy (1975)
* The Temptation of the Impossible (2004)

Essay collections|

* A Writer's Reality (1991)
* A Fish in the Water (1993)
* The Milestones and the Stories of Greatest Literary Works (1995)
* Making Waves (1997)
* Letters to a Young Novelist (1997)
* The Language of Passion (2001)

Adaptations|

* Tune in Tomorrow (film; 1990)
* The Feast of the Goat (film; 2005)

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