Read it in the Green Room
This Other Eden
- writingLong, lyrical, Faulknerian sentences
- atmosphereDynamic, bravura melancholy
- settingMaine island, 1911-12
A fictionalised version of the 1912 eviction of an interracial island community off Maine, told in long, rolling sentences. It rewards readers who like historical fiction with a lyrical, almost mythic voice.
Beta invites go out in waitlist order. One devlog email a month, at most — or just read the devlog.
This Other Eden
Paul Harding
The Green Room
Backstage of This Other Eden.
Walk in mid-chapter. The people of the book are there, as themselves, knowing what they know so far — and nothing else. Ask them anything. They have read exactly as far as you have.
A moment in the Green Room
This Other Eden · Paul Harding
The narrator
Of This Other Eden, as they are at your reading place
You
What happens next?
The narrator
“I can only tell you what you have read. Past your page there is nothing yet — not for you, and not for me. Turn it, and come back.”
Their knowledge stops where your reading does.
Who is in the room
Anyone who has walked on by your page.
The cast
Any character who has appeared so far. Someone who hasn’t walked on yet isn’t in the room. That’s not a limitation; that’s the point.
The narrator
The voice telling you the story, as far as it has told it.
The author
As the book presents them — the mind behind the pages you have read, not a biography.
The book itself
Ask what it is doing to you so far. It answers from its own pages, up to yours.
Before you go in
What critics and prize juries said.
Editorial synthesis
On NPR's Fresh Air, Maureen Corrigan called it a stunning new novel and an intense wonder of a historical novel, noting that the author's style has been likened to Faulkner. Kirkus Reviews described lyrical sheets of prose and a brief book that carries the weight of history. Both treat the Malaga Island history as the foundation for a larger meditation on community and displacement.
Drawn from Kirkus Reviews, NPR Fresh Air.
Recognition
- ShortlistBooker Prize 2023
How it stays unspoiled
Nothing past your page exists.
The companion is assembled from the passages you have read and only those. A character who knows the ending is no one worth talking to, so there is no override — not behind a setting, not behind a confirmation. Your position is the wall.
Get the book
One ebook. Yours.
US$17.99ebook · eBooks.com
Buy the ebook once, read it in Green Room — or in any reader you already use.
Get the ebook at eBooks.comReading, narration and Green Room compatibility not yet verified for the retailer edition.
The cast has been waiting for you.
Join the waitlist — beta invites go out in order, and the devlog keeps you honest company until then.
