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Paradise

By Toni Morrison

By Toni Morrison

By Toni Morrison

By Toni Morrison

By Toni Morrison
Read by Toni Morrison

By Toni Morrison
Read by Toni Morrison

Best Seller

Part of Vintage International

Paperback $16.95

Mar 11, 2014 | ISBN 9780804169882

Ebook $14.99

Jul 24, 2007 | ISBN 9780307388117

Audiobook Download $22.50

Nov 14, 2017 | 919 Minutes

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    Paradise by Toni Morrison
    Paperback $16.95
    Mar 11, 2014 | ISBN 9780804169882

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      Mar 11, 2014 | ISBN 9780804169882

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      Jul 24, 2007 | ISBN 9780307388117

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    About Paradise

    In prose that soars with the rhythms, grandeur, and tragic arc of an epic poem, Toni Morrison challenges our most fiercely held beliefs as she weaves folklore and history, memory and myth into an unforgettable meditation on race, religion, gender, and a far-off past that is ever present. 

    “They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.” So begins Toni Morrison’s Paradise, which opens with a horrifying scene of mass violence and chronicles its genesis in an all-black small town in rural Oklahoma. Founded by the descendants of freed slaves and survivors in exodus from a hostile world, the patriarchal community of Ruby is built on righteousness, rigidly enforced moral law, and fear. But seventeen miles away, another group of exiles has gathered in a promised land of their own. And it is upon these women in flight from death and despair that nine male citizens of Ruby will lay their pain, their terror, and their murderous rage.

    “A fascinating story, wonderfully detailed. . . . The town is the stage for a profound and provocative debate.” —Los Angeles Times

    About Paradise

    In prose that soars with the rhythms, grandeur, and tragic arc of an epic poem, Toni Morrison challenges our most fiercely held beliefs as she weaves folklore and history, memory and myth into an unforgettable meditation on race, religion, gender, and a far-off past that is ever present. 

    “They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.” So begins Toni Morrison’s Paradise, which opens with a horrifying scene of mass violence and chronicles its genesis in an all-black small town in rural Oklahoma. Founded by the descendants of freed slaves and survivors in exodus from a hostile world, the patriarchal community of Ruby is built on righteousness, rigidly enforced moral law, and fear. But seventeen miles away, another group of exiles has gathered in a promised land of their own. And it is upon these women in flight from death and despair that nine male citizens of Ruby will lay their pain, their terror, and their murderous rage.

    “A fascinating story, wonderfully detailed. . . . The town is the stage for a profound and provocative debate.” —Los Angeles Times

    About Paradise

    "Rumors had been whispered for more than a year. Outrages that had been accumulating all along took shape as evidence. A mother was knocked down the stairs by her cold-eyed daughter. Four damaged infants were born in one family. Daughters refused to get out of bed. Brides disappeared on their honeymoons. Two brothers shot each other on New Year’s Day. Trips to Demby for VD shots common. And what went on at the Oven these days was not to be believed . . . The proof they had been collecting since the terrible discovery in the spring could not be denied: the one thing that connected all these catastrophes was in the Convent. And in the Convent were those women."

    In Paradise–her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature–Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain," assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town’s ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void "Out There . . . where random and organized evil erupted when and where it chose." Richly imagined and elegantly composed, Paradise weaves a powerful mystery.

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    See all books by Toni Morrison

    Also by Toni Morrison

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    The Source of Self-Regard
    The Measure of Our Lives
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    See all books by Toni Morrison

    About Toni Morrison

    TONI MORRISON is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She… More about Toni Morrison

    About Toni Morrison

    TONI MORRISON is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She… More about Toni Morrison

    About Toni Morrison

    TONI MORRISON is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She… More about Toni Morrison

    Product Details

    Category: Historical Fiction | Literary Fiction

    Paperback | $16.95
    Published by Vintage
    Mar 11, 2014 | 336 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780804169882

    Category: Historical Fiction | Literary Fiction

    Ebook | $14.99
    Published by Vintage
    Jul 24, 2007 | 320 Pages | ISBN 9780307388117

    Category: Literary Fiction | Audiobooks

    Audiobook Download | $22.50
    Published by Random House Audio
    Nov 14, 2017 | 919 Minutes | ISBN 9780147520319

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    Praise

    “Morrison has brought it all together: the poetry, the emotion, the broad symbolic plan.” —The New York Times Book Review

    “Stunning. . . . Morrison at her novelistic best.” —The New Yorker

    “Morrison dazzles.” —The Nation
     
    “A fascinating story, wonderfully detailed. . . . The town is the stage for a profound and provocative debate.” —Los Angeles Times
     
    “Morrison [is] a master storyteller. . . . She is at the height of her imaginative powers.” —New York Daily News

    “Everything is resonant here: the most casual gestures are informed by the facts and myths of genders and race, by our notions of civilization and lawlessness, body and spirit, Christianity and witchcraft. Morrison’s lyrical prose displays great confidence in her readers’ intelligence, demands their unflagging attention, and rewards them generously—with a memorable work of epic range and monumental ambition.” —People
    “Toni Morrison is an extraordinarily good writer. Two pages into anything she writes one feels the power of her language and the emotional authority behind that language.” —The Village Voice

    “Morrison is at the top of her form. . . . Impressive, eloquent, and powerfully imagined.” —The Baltimore Sun

    “Morrison is a terrific storyteller. . . . Her writing evokes the joyful richness of life.” —Newsday

    “A breathtaking, risk-taking major work that will have readers feverishly, and fearfully turning the pages.” —Kirkus Reviews

    “[A] triumph. . . . The individual stories of both the women and the townspeople reveal Morrison at her best.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)

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