Paradiso 17

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What to expect

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026

‘Miraculous’ OMAR EL AKKAD

‘Stunning’ MAAZA MENGISTE

‘Suffused with tenderness’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘Beautiful and powerful’ LISA OWENS

‘Wondrous’ NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH

An extraordinary, sweeping novel following one man's itinerant search for home across the globe, after his childhood exile from Palestine.

All his life, exile has been the shadow stitched to the sole of Sufien’s shoe.

Born in Palestine on the precipice of 1948’s Nakba, Sufien is forced to leave the only home he’s ever known, the one on the hill with a beautiful blue door. In this moment time stops making sense.

He spends the rest of his life propelled forward – although in search of what, he is never quite sure. In the dusty, oil-rich desert of Kuwait, he meets his first love and decides he must leave his family. In a small Italian university town, he spends his youth wrapped up in the forgetful assurance of wine. When life carries him to a gritty New York, he discovers his true vocation and falls in love with a Jewish woman born into a wholly different world. Until finally, he finds himself recalled to the wild, vast open skies of a desert much like his first home.

Paradiso 17 is haunted with grief and yet it is also struck through with the dazzling light of a life truly lived and a love that connects us, no matter our distance.

Like all of our dead, Sufien still speaks, the book begins. Listen, this is his story.

‘An exquisite novel … unforgettable’ OMAR EL AKKAD, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

‘I could not put this down … Compassionate, elegiac and suffuse with unflinching wit’ MAAZA MENGISTE, author of The Shadow King

‘A gripping story of a soul in exile’ JUSTIN TORRES, author of Blackouts

‘A miraculous novel’ KASIM ALI, author of Who Will Remain

‘Remarkable … read it, read it, read it’ RABIH ALAMEDDINE, author of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible

‘Lyrical and gorgeously original … reads as poetry’ LITHUB

Critics Review

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‘Paradiso 17 deepens its primary note, the toll of human displacement, until it has an operatic resonance … Assadi’s prose is controlled, tensile and patient … suffused with tenderness’ New York Times

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‘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’ Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

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‘By turns brutal and poetic, Paradiso 17 is a beautiful and powerful exploration of selfhood and endurance in the face of profound loss’ Lisa Owens, author of Natural Disaster

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‘Beautifully crafted … Assadi is a master of time and place’ Vulture

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‘A sweeping, deeply personal novel based on the life of Assadi’s father … an unforgettable character’ Kirkus

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‘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

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‘A searing portrait of exile, of a man reeling from home to home after the loss of Palestine’ Hala Alyan, author of I’ll Tell You When I’m Home

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‘Unforgettable … 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

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‘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

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‘A wondrous portrait of a man in exile, searching for home where his home is not. A miraculous novel, not one I'll be easily forgetting’ Kasim Ali, author of Who Will Remain

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‘An intense, fearless, lyrical and quite astonishing novel about the haunted apparitional life of a refugee’ Joy Williams, author of Harrow

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‘Remarkable … 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

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