Paradiso 17

“An intense, fearless, lyrical, and quite astonishing novel about the haunted apparitional life of a refugee.” —Joy Williams, author of The Pelican Child

“Paradiso 17 is remarkable. It’s a novel of unearthing, a story of quiet explosions, of memories lost and recovered. It’s 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 (and His Mother)

“Paradiso 17 is a searing portrait of exile, of a man reeling from home to home after the loss of Palestine. This poet’s novel is a true beauty, a tale of grief and also ultimate, otherworldly triumph and return.” —Hala Alyan, author of I’ll Tell You When I’m Home

“There is something miraculous about Paradiso 17, about the poetry that seems to guide every sentence of this exquisite novel. With stunning intimacy, Hannah Lillith Assadi has crafted an unforgettable story about the many stunted afterlives of hyphenated belonging. In this book live some of the most complex characters I’ve read in a long time, and 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

“Paradiso 17 took my breath away. I put the book down wondering how Assadi had managed to so elegantly capture the grand, devastating, mundane, and often beautiful sweep of a life shaped by dispossession and exile. Paradiso 17 puts in writing the intricate dance played by politics, place, and personality, and the result is a novel that is so rigorously tender to its flawed, wonderful protagonist, and so honest about the ways we move through the world that I wept at its ending. A beautiful testament to the power of recording a life through art.” —Lydia Kiesling, author of Mobility

“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

“Paradiso 17 is a novel of wondrous care and meticulous precision. It works on scales both epic and intimate while guiding the reader on a journey they will not forget. 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

“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, Paradiso 17 is a stunning testament to a people who will never abandon home, no matter how far they must travel in exile.” —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

“[A] sweeping, deeply personal novel based on the life of Assadi’s father, a Palestinian exile . . . yearning to find his true home. But what is home? That is the idiosyncratic Sufien’s central question, one he still struggles to answer from his deathbed while recalling his life journey. . . . As rendered in Assadi’s dreamy, lyrical . . . prose, Sufien is thoroughly beguiling—charming, smart, funny, and spiritual . . . [and] suffers from melancholia. . . . Family and friends never stop loving Sufien. Neither does the reader. With a generous vision, Assadi has created an unforgettable character in a multidimensional world.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“A beautiful and heartbreaking novel. . . . Assadi writes with astonishing fluidity, using Sufien’s story to illustrate the legacy of displacement without losing sight of the character’s humanity, as Sufien, now dying from cancer in his 70s, considers how his ‘homeland had been stolen, was being stolen, cast to the dustbin of history.’ . . . This is remarkable.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Flowing backwards and forwards through the life of Sufien, a Palestinian refugee, this delicately etched memory piece evokes the unending pain of the refugee experience. . . . A heartfelt, beautifully told, and powerful narrative of loss.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Stunning. . . . [An] exquisitely written and elemental meditation on mortality, the weight of a single life, and what it can carry.” —Alta