This Other Eden

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023

A novel inspired by the true story of the once racially integrated Malaga Island off the coast of Maine, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Tinkers.

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.