Book description
In 1844, Flora Tristan embarked on a tour of France to campaign for
workers' and women's rights. In 1891, her grandson set sail for
Tahiti, determined to escape civilisation and seek out inspiration to
paint his primitive masterpieces. Flora died before her grandson was
born, but their travels and obsessions unravel side by side in this
absorbing novel. Flora, the illegitimate child of a wealthy Peruvian
father and French mother, grows up in poverty, and after fleeing a
brutal husband, journeys to Peru to demand her inheritance. On her
return, she makes her name as a popular writer and a champion of the
dispossessed, setting herself the arduous task of touring the French
countryside to recruit members for her Workers' Union. Paul,
struggling, profligate painter and stubborn visionary, abandons his
wife and five children for life in the South Seas, where his dreams of
paradise are poisoned by poverty, syphilis and the stifling forces of
French colonialism, though he has his pick of teenage Tahitian lovers
and paints some of his greatest works. A rare study of passion,
ambition and the determined pursuit of greatness in the face of
illness, death and conservative forces, The Way to Paradise shows a
contemporary master at the peak of his powers.
Mario Vargas-Llosa was born in Peru is 1936. He is the author of some
of the last half-century's most important novels, including The War of
the End of the World, The Feast of the Goat, Aunt Julia and the
Scriptwriter and Conversation in the Cathedral. In 2010 he was awarded
the Nobel Prize in Literature.
