
To Paradise
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Edoardo Ballerini
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Catherine Ho
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BD Wong
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Feodor Chin
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Kurt Kanazawa
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By:
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Hanya Yanagihara
About this listen
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the award-winning, best-selling author of the classic A Little Life—a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: VOGUE • ESQUIRE • NPR • GOODREADS
To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvelous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love—partners, lovers, children, friends, family, and even our fellow citizens—and the pain that ensues when we cannot.
In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances.
These three sections comprise an ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.
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Critic reviews
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • ON PRESIDENT OBAMA’S SUMMER READING LIST
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: VOGUE • ESQUIRE • GLAMOUR • NPR • GOODREADS • O MAGAZINE
“Remarkable…The emotional impact of this novel is less visceral than A LITTLE LIFE but only because the author’s scope is so vast and her dexterity so dazzling….TO PARADISE demonstrates the inexhaustible ingenuity of an author who keeps shattering expectations….she explores the dream of freedom that lures all these characters to risk everything for a paradise they desire but can barely envision. No matter the setting – past present or future – TO PARADISE stems from the hypnotic confluence of Yanagihara’s skills. She speaks softly, with the urgency of a whisper. She draws us into the most intimate sympathy with these characters while placing them in crises that feel irresistibly compelling.” — Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“We are given a patriarch, wealth, children; there is an arranged marriage, an inheritance, a true love, a class divide and a significant twist. Deftly paced and judiciously detailed, the tale makes hay with the conventions of the 19th-century novel. But that’s not all. With breathtaking audacity Yanagihara rewrites America….Yanagihara masterfully repurposes themes, situations and motifs…This ambitious novel tackles major American questions and answers them in an original, engrossing way. It has a major feel. But it is finally in [its] minor moments that Yanagihara shows greatness.” — Gish Jen, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
"Tour de force…Yanagihara changes the novel landscape: What is different, we accept; what is familiar, we recognize. To Paradise resonates because of its exploration of human relationships and the dismantling of preconceived notions. Biases and hatreds lurk and linger, emerging periodically to remind us that while one form of discrimination may have been eliminated, others remain embedded in our institutions, and cannot easily be eradicated; in the end, threads of prejudice bind all three parts. And yet To Paradise is rich with characters that live and love, with few boundaries. Yanagihara asks us to consider an alternative America that could have existed at any point in history if other decisions had been made, and that might still prevail if we do the right thing." — Oprah Daily
Interview: Hanya Yanagihara on Why Our Longing for Paradise Will Forever Disappoint

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Story
A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.
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i’m unwell
- By Baili on 02-14-25
By: Hanya Yanagihara
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Little and Often
- A Memoir
- By: Trent Preszler
- Narrated by: Matt Bomer
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Trent Preszler thought he was living the life he always wanted, with a job at a winery and a seaside Long Island home, when he was called back to the life he left behind. After years of estrangement, his cancer-stricken father had invited him to South Dakota for Thanksgiving. It would be the last time he saw his father alive. Preszler’s only inheritance was a beat-up wooden toolbox that had belonged to his father, who was a cattle rancher, rodeo champion, and Vietnam War Bronze Star Medal recipient. This family heirloom befuddled Preszler.
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So good
- By Trevor Stanco on 04-28-21
By: Trent Preszler
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The Little Friend
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 25 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The second novel by Donna Tartt, best-selling author of The Goldfinch (winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize), The Little Friend is a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence, and evil. The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved. So Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright and insufferably determined - sets out to unmask his killer.
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Couldn't put it down
- By Sam on 03-15-12
By: Donna Tartt
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We Should All Be Feminists
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Length: 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In this personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman now—and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.
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compelling
- By Gregg Coffin on 06-01-17
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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
- A Novel
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late 20s, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born - a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam - and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.
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Beautifully written, but painful.
- By NB on 06-10-19
By: Ocean Vuong
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How High We Go in the Dark
- A Novel
- By: Sequoia Nagamatsu
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Brian Nishii, Keisuke Hoashi, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus. Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy.
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Should come with a sadness warning
- By KJH on 03-16-22
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The Goldfinch
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 32 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity. It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
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Boy, am I in the minority on this one.
- By Bon Ami on 11-04-13
By: Donna Tartt
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The Heart's Invisible Furies
- A Novel
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
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Outstanding. A Must listen.
- By Keith G on 09-04-17
By: John Boyne
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My Year of Rest and Relaxation
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate; she works an easy job at a hip art gallery and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
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I love it...
- By Claudia Gallegos on 07-12-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
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Shuggie Bain
- By: Douglas Stuart
- Narrated by: Angus King
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Shuggie’s mother Agnes walks a wayward path: She is Shuggie’s guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good - her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor.
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There’s far too much real pain and sadness in the world to spend any time listening to this tale of woe
- By SuperShopper on 02-18-21
By: Douglas Stuart
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The Great Believers
- By: Rebecca Makkai
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.
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A story for all time
- By Carla jo Thompson on 08-06-18
By: Rebecca Makkai
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Earthlings
- A Novel
- By: Sayaka Murata
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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As a child, Natsuki doesn’t fit into her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut who has explained to her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth.
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Intriguing but disturbing
- By C. Parham on 01-01-21
By: Sayaka Murata
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Ours
- A Novel
- By: Phillip B. Williams
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 22 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In this ingenious, sweeping novel, Phillip B. Williams introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome conjurer who, in the 1830s, annihilates plantations all over Arkansas to rescue the people enslaved there. She brings those she has freed to a haven of her own creation: a town just north of St. Louis, magically concealed from outsiders, named Ours. It is in this miraculous place that Saint’s grand experiment—a truly secluded community where her people may flourish—takes root.
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So good
- By C. Mercer on 02-19-25
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Severance
- A Novel
- By: Ling Ma
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend. So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York.
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4.19 stars
- By ibillinsly@gmail on 12-06-18
By: Ling Ma
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Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
- A Novel
- By: Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones
- Narrated by: Beata Pozniak
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then, a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon, other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind....
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Narrator - Authentic as it can get!
- By Chris on 09-03-19
By: Olga Tokarczuk, and others
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Tan poca vida [A Little Life]
- By: Hanya Yanagihara, Aurora Echevarría Pérez - traductor
- Narrated by: Víctor Velasco, Xavi Fernández
- Length: 29 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Cuatro compañeros de universidad se trasladan a Nueva York, donde solo cuentan con su amistad y su ambición para abrirse camino. Willem es guapo, amable y quiere ser actor; JB es un pintor ingenioso y a veces cruel, dispuesto a destacar en el difícil mundo del arte; Malcolm es un arquitecto soñador, y Jude es el joven retraído, brillante y enigmático que pronto se convertirá en el epicentro del grupo.
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Frustrante
- By Marisa Quiroz Lemus on 03-21-24
By: Hanya Yanagihara, and others
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Our Evenings
- A Novel
- By: Alan Hollinghurst
- Narrated by: Prasanna Puwanarajah
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates.
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Sublime Collaboration
- By Phip Herrick on 11-20-24
What listeners say about To Paradise
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- William
- 02-11-22
Masterpiece
This is a complex story weaving together disparate, yet connected narratives of an escalating, collective unraveling. The characters are rich, the writing is very smart. Yanagihara is a gifted in her ability to suck you deeply into the inner lives of so many characters. You’re left with many questions. This book will be in my head for a long time.
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1 person found this helpful
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- E. Mercedes
- 06-15-22
Really hard listen, but so thought provoking.
This book really challenged me, but also broke me open and made me see many things from different perspective. I probably would not have read if I knew it was going to touch on the issue of pandemics, but glad I did because it made me open my mind in a way I doubt I would if I were discussing with another person with strongly held beliefs.
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1 person found this helpful
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- amy kaster
- 06-24-22
to Paradise
this woman knows how to write!. dystopian tail about a grandchild who makes it into a safe place.
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1 person found this helpful
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- dark coco
- 11-20-22
soo many Charlies, Edwards and Davids
Started out interesting but too long to keep interest throughout; confusion used to convey several underlying themes of the book
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- Joan Fondell
- 11-25-22
Brilliant in every way
This is an amazing piece of writing. I think this author is one of the brightest lights in contemporary literature. This epistolary form is unique and compelling. Loved it.
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- Teri
- 09-25-22
Beautiful and thought provoking
This book was very different from anything I’ve ever read. It’s a book I will think about for a long time and will certainly listen to again. The narration was perfect.
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- Jay
- 12-23-23
A Historical Fiction of the Future
There was an excellent use of vocabulary sprinkled in with accessible dialogue for a comfortable read. The story has challenging themes of personal relations that enlarged my perspectives.
Be prepared for a long read but a worthwhile one.
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- Menorca
- 01-18-22
a masterpiece
An exquisitely written, convoluted book. It will surely enter the canon of American literature.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Elizabeth Pep
- 12-02-23
Absolutely extraordinary
Breathtaking, sweeping, layered and rich tapestry of lives. This is the second book of Hanya Yanagihara’s I’ve listened to and they both kept me spellbound.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-02-23
Thank you
Thank you to the brilliant author and wonderful readers, especially B D. Wong.
Magnificent story.
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1 person found this helpful