This Other Eden cover art

This Other Eden

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

This Other Eden

By: Paul Harding
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. More than a century later, the Honeys' descendants remain, with an eccentric, diverse band of neighbours. But during one tumultuous summer at the dawn of the twentieth century, one prejudiced missionary lands on the island's shores, disrupting the community's fragile balance with everlasting consequences.

Full of lyricism and power, Paul Harding's This Other Eden explores the hopes and dreams and resilience of those seen not to fit a world brutally intolerant of difference.



'Masterful . . . has much to say to our times' Guardian

'Begs to be read' Spectator

'A luminous, thought-provoking novel' Esi Edugyan, author of Washington Black

©2023 Paul Harding (P)2023 Penguin Audio

 Family Life Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Fiction Island Heartfelt

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Pearl cover art
Kind One cover art
So Late in the Day cover art
Salvage cover art
Karitas Untitled cover art
My Antonia cover art
The Hollow Sea cover art

Critic reviews

'A testament of love . . . so real it could make you weep.' Danez Smith, New York Times
All stars
Most relevant  
Wow what an incredible novel, one of the best I’ve read so far this year

Incredible

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is. without doubt, one of the most beautiful books I have ever experienced. the writing is true and subtle; whimsical yet steady and weighted. there is a magic to it that does not let you go... you cannot help but live with the story the whole time it is in your life. It will not leave you. Well worthy of it's Booker Prize short list nomination. having recently read Phrophet Song (another wonderful read), my opinion is that this story would also have been worty winner of the prize.

A masterpiece

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A thought provoking book about seeing the value of different ways of life and different people's and what happens when we fail.
There are some alarmingly long sentences which took a while to adjust to, and because the performance jumps from story to historical record in the same voice I found it a little disjointed, but overall a rewarding book. The story is peopled with some unusual islanders, who have evolved to survive in their particular circumstances, a salt of the earth fringe who are ill equipped to deal with the actions of pompous self serving and ignorant scoundrels who deny their rights.

Thought provoking read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An extremely poignant story, made even more hard to grasp as it is based (loosely) on real events.

So beautiful and haunting

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Paul Harding poetic prose and grim narrative of the residents of Malaga Island is uplifted by the flawless narration of Edoardo Ballerini.

Remarkable writing feat

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book is about an other Eden, presenting a hauntingly beautiful experience of why it was an Eden to the inhabitants who to many of us would be the disposed. That the island and its people are so lovingly but realistically presented, is amazing. We can practically touch everything. In contrast the history is dry and disturbing as I am sure the aftermath was.
We have need of this vision of Eden today to preserve it.

When life’s mundane strangeness becomes lyrical

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This beautifully written and narrated novel is graphic and disturbing and unconscious up so many images of a historic and tragic Island story off the coast of Maine. I thoroughly recommend it.

One island like no other

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Slow moving, detailed account of the limited lives of a small group of mixed race islanders living in abject poverty. Interventions by do-gooder outsiders, alongside others with racist and eugenic values, ultimately destroy the community.

Short, harrowing tale

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This novel of the displacement of an island community on an isolated isle off Maine is both disturbing and absorbing. Some of the descriptions are so beautiful you will want to go back and hear them again.

Powerful, disturbing novel

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book was so beautiful, not only did I listen to it, I wanted to read and savour each word. This book will join my list of beloved stories. Bravo Mr Harding; a feat like no other.

Lyrical, spellbinding and disconsolate tale of historical fiction

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews