Paradiso 17

Praise for Paradiso 17:

‘Paradiso 17 deepens its primary note, the toll of human displacement, until it has an operatic resonance … Assadi’s prose is controlled, tensile and patient … suffused with tenderness’ New York Times

‘I could not put down this sweeping narrative, written in some of the most transcendent prose I have read in a long time. Compassionate, elegiac and suffuse with unflinching wit’ Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

‘By turns brutal and poetic, Paradiso 17 is a beautiful and powerful exploration of selfhood and endurance in the face of profound loss’ Lisa Owens, author of Natural Disaster

‘Beautifully crafted … Assadi is a master of time and place’ Vulture

‘A sweeping, deeply personal novel based on the life of Assadi’s father … an unforgettable character’ Kirkus

‘Assadi is a gorgeous writer, and here she unfurls a gripping story of a soul in exile. Paradiso 17 comes like a fugue, asking questions both timeless and heartbreakingly urgent’ Justin Torres, author of Blackouts

‘A searing portrait of exile, of a man reeling from home to home after the loss of Palestine’ Hala Alyan, author of I’ll Tell You When I’m Home

‘Unforgettable … a deeply nuanced exploration of exile as both event and inheritance’ Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

‘Generations are captured here, loss and pain and miraculous attempt at renewal. A beautiful work’ Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars

‘A wondrous portrait of a man in exile, searching for home where his home is not. A miraculous novel, not one I’ll be easily forgetting’ Kasim Ali, author of Who Will Remain

‘An intense, fearless, lyrical and quite astonishing novel about the haunted apparitional life of a refugee’ Joy Williams, author of Harrow

‘Remarkable … urgent and necessary. Read it as an intimate family tale, as mythos, or as history – but read it, read it, read it’ Rabih Alameddine, author of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible

Hannah Lillith Assadi was raised by a Jewish mother and Palestinian father. She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree and is the author of Sonora, which received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Her second novel, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, was a New Yorker and NPR best book of 2022. She teaches fiction at the Columbia University School of the Arts and the Pratt Institute.