It’s an ingenious narrative embodiment of the old saying that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” The novel toys with character names and identity across three centuries in a way that feels genuinely innovative, including clever and subtle elements of metafiction.Brimming with brutal brilliance and humanistic heart, To Paradise is a tour de force of literary creativity that solidifies Yanagihara’s place among today’s most elite and daring novelists. These stories appear to take place in separate but metaphysically-linked universes, but the novel is highly interpretable on many levels. Book III takes place in 2093, and depicts an America that has devolved into a grim totalitarian dystopia in order to stave off a combination of increasingly-deadly pathogens and climate catastrophes. Book II takes place in 1993, and explores the true-history HIV/AIDS crisis and the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Book I takes place in 1893, and invites the reader into an alternate history in which the American Civil War had much different consequences. The story is told in three Books, each of which is loosely connected through the recurrence of certain character names and relationship dynamics that inhabit a single home in Washington Square, New York City. Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradiseis an exquisitely-crafted and emotionally-gripping novel that covers a huge swath of thematic, historical, and futuristic ground.

To paradise hanya yanagihara