'In Mario Vargas Llosa's latest novel there are two stories - that of Paul Gauguin, the Post-Impressionist painter, and that of Paul Gauguin's grandmother, Flora Tristan . . . what makes the novel so illuminating is the continuity between their parallel lives . . . the novel is highly accomplished and teems with characters, ideas and incident - Gauguin and Flora may have thought they were masters of their own destiny, but this novel powerfully suggests that even that may have been an illusion - like paradise itself.' Literary Review

'Vargas Llosa's storytelling gifts are pretty much unrivalled, and they don't desert him this time either. His recreation of the tactile, sensuous, brilliant, whiffy details of the everyday is superb . . . a fabulously abundant book.' Financial Times

'The Way to Paradise weaves an extraordinarily rich double fantasia around Gauguin's life, strenuously explores qualities in the works, and sets moral issues in a far wilder, more real historical world . . . riveting stuff, beautifully written, wild, exact, and visually stunning.' Independent