The Ways of Paradise [Paperback]

In his foreword toThe Ways of Paradise, Peter Cornell presents this so-called found manuscript, the work of a now-deceased, obscure researcher who spent three decades in the National Library of Sweden working on his magnum opus. Upon his death, no trace of this work remains aside from this set of notes and fragments which form an enigmatic set of texts on the connections between art, literature, spirituality and the occult through history, with a particular focus on spirals and labyrinths. Ranging from the Crusades to Ruskin, Freud to surrealism, cubism, automatic writing, Duchamp, the Manhattan Project, Pollock and Smithson, this cult book, first published in Sweden in 1987, is translated into English for the first time by Saskia Vogel.

A cult book at the intersection of fiction and essay, on?the connections between art, literature, spirituality and the occult through history.

Born in Stockholm in 1942, Peter Cornell is a writer, historian and art critic. He taught theory and history of modern art at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) and the Royal Institute of the Arts (Kungliga Konsth?gskolan) in Stockholm, and is an honorary member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts (Konstakademien).?

Saskia Vogel is the author of?Permission?(2019), the translator of over twenty Swedish-language books and the deputy editor of the?Erotic Review. Her work has been awarded the Berlin Senate grant for non-German literature and the Bernard Shaw Prize. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives in Berlin.

Like a collision between the fantastical libraries of Borges, David Marksons art obsessed micronarratives and Iain Sinclairs occult strain of psychogeography.?The Ways of Paradise?is a labyrinth I never wanted to escape.
 Chris Power, author of?A Lonely Man

Who could have imagined that a set of imaginary orphaned footnotes could yield so much pleasure and fascinatio