Paradise Once: A Novel
Olive Senior
Jun 2025 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Almarie Guerra
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9 hr 58 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
A historical novel that brings to life the resiliency of the indigenous Taíno people in the Caribbean whose culture was virtually destroyed within two generations of their “discovery” by Christopher Columbus in 1492
Paradise Once is a sweeping historical novel that brings to life the resiliency of the indigenous Taíno people of the Caribbean, whose culture was virtually destroyed within two generations of their “discovery” by Christopher Columbus in 1492.
In 1513 in Cuba, an entire village is wiped out by Spanish forces for no discernible reason. Had the villagers offended their spiritual guides—the cemíes—as one faction claimed, by incorporating foreign practices?
Four youthful survivors escape the massacre—three indigenous and one African runaway. They start off on separate perilous paths, not knowing they have been chosen by the cemíes to carry out a sacred mission—to ensure the survival of a Sacred Bundle that will enable a Taíno revival in future generations. But first, an epic spiritual battle must be played out.
In this love song to the Caribbean, Olive Senior authentically evokes the physical and spiritual worlds of its First Peoples and the survivors—indigenous and African—who will become the resistance fighters known in history as Cimarrones or Maroons.
Paradise Once is a sweeping historical novel that brings to life the resiliency of the indigenous Taíno people of the Caribbean, whose culture was virtually destroyed within two generations of their “discovery” by Christopher Columbus in 1492.
In 1513 in Cuba, an entire village is wiped out by Spanish forces for no discernible reason. Had the villagers offended their spiritual guides—the cemíes—as one faction claimed, by incorporating foreign practices?
Four youthful survivors escape the massacre—three indigenous and one African runaway. They start off on separate perilous paths, not knowing they have been chosen by the cemíes to carry out a sacred mission—to ensure the survival of a Sacred Bundle that will enable a Taíno revival in future generations. But first, an epic spiritual battle must be played out.
In this love song to the Caribbean, Olive Senior authentically evokes the physical and spiritual worlds of its First Peoples and the survivors—indigenous and African—who will become the resistance fighters known in history as Cimarrones or Maroons.
About the author
OLIVE SENIOR is the award-winning author of twenty books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children’s literature. She was the Poet Laureate of Jamaica from 2021 to 2024, and has received numerous awards and honors, including honorary doctorates from the University of the West Indies (Jamaica) and York University (Canada), the Gold Medal of the Institute of Jamaica, Canada’s Matt Cohen Award for Lifetime Achievement, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Senior’s work is widely translated, and is taught in schools and other institutions worldwide; her writing is also the subject of numerous critical essays. She splits her time between Toronto, Canada and Kingston, Jamaica. Paradise Once is her latest novel.
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