Exiles In Paradise

A brilliant look at the writers, artists, scientists, movie directors, and scholars—ranging from Bertolt Brecht to Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Mann, and Fritz Lang—who fled Hitler's Germany and how they changed the very fabric of American culture. In a new postscript, Heilbut draws attention to the recent changes in reputation and image that have shaped the reception of the German exiles. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983 with a paperback in 1997.

This is the strange story of how, following the failure of the revolutionary Paris Commune in 1871, some 4,500 Communards were exiled to the South Pacific colony of New Caledonia. The surprising parallels and interactions between the "political savages" and the "natural savages," the Melanesian Kanak, in their confrontation with the forces of French civilization, form the subject of this book.

DIVThe crumbling, abandoned villas above Florence proved irresistible to an eccentric colony of late 19th-century English and American expatriates. This entertaining book features 20 of these characters and the unusual gardens they created. They include bereaved philosopher Charles Strong, whose Rockefeller in-laws financed his villa retreat; crossdressing English essayist Violet Paget; beautiful Serbian Princess Jeanne Ghika, who lived in seclusion with her American companion Miss Blood; and eccentric English romance writer Ouida. These Anglo-Florentines injected new life into Tuscany's decrepit gardens, touring the countryside for inspiration and trawling old libraries for treatises and manuals. Some smothered their walls with scented climbers, replaced gravel terraces with emerald lawns, and stuffed box parterres with bright bedding plants and orchards with exotic shrubs. Gorgeous photography, archival images, literary references, and gossipy tidbits bring this irresistible intersection of bohemia and nature to life.

Farhad is a Franco-Iranian Muslim living in Paris. He and his friends feel like strangers in France, the country they grew up in, facing discrimination from prospective employers, and rejection for their Islamic faith, traditions and values. In a quest to track down a long-lost heirloom, Farhad explores his family history and heritage across the globe, as his search for the rare Alamut stone takes him between London and Iran. Nearer to home, Farhad's closest friend Reza gets a job at an Islamic charity and begins to withdraw. Others fear that he is being radicalised, provoking profound questions about the nature of nationality and identity in the 21st century.

American Gods meets The Chronicles of Narnia in this adult fantasy about the Biblical Adam recovering the lost pieces of the Garden of Eden. Many millennia after the fall of Eden, Adam, the first man in creation, still walks the Earth – exhausted by the endless death and destruction, he is a shadow of his former hope and glory. And he is not the only one. The Garden was deconstructed, its pieces scattered across the world and its inhabitants condemned to live out immortal lives, hiding in plain sight from generations of mankind. But now pieces of the Garden are turning up on the Earth. After centuries of loneliness, Adam, haunted by the golden time at the beginning of Creation, is determined to save the pieces of his long lost home. With the help of Eden's undying exiles, he must stop Eden becoming the plaything of mankind. Adam journeys across America and the British Isles with Magpie, Owl, and other animals, gathering the scattered pieces of Paradise. As the country floods once more, Adam must risk it all to rescue his friends and his home – because rebuilding the Garden might be the key to rebuilding his life.

The acclaimed Nobel Prize winner 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—in prose that soars with the rhythms, grandeur, and tragic arc of an epic poem. “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