Inner landscapes, primitive worlds: Angela Carter meets Gabriel Garcia Marquez in this collection of brightly coloured, convention-tangling origin myths.

Longlisted for the 2014 Frank O'Connor Awardand the 2014 Giller PrizeMoody, 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 AtwoodThe 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 Paradise & ElsewhereThis vibrant, startlingly imaginative collection reminded meas few collections have done in recent yearsof 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

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