Paradisos

On the imaginary Aegean island of Phaedros, paradise is both inheritance and illusion.

In 2015, as Greece buckles under economic collapse and a mounting refugee crisis, Greek-Australian resort owner Emilio Politis believes he has secured his future. But when a freak storm capsizes a migrant boat, Emilio’s rescue of a young Syrian mother fractures the fragile order of his life, exposing deep rifts within his family and community.

As fear, superstition and a shocking murder grip the island, ancient myths collide with modern anxieties: rumours of witchcraft, forbidden love and religious intolerance. Emilio’s growing obsession with the refugee woman forces him to confront his own capacity for love, migration and the cost of belonging to the island that both sustains and condemns him.

Set against sacred ruins and contested shores, Paradisos is a haunting literary novel of displacement, desire and moral reckoning-and the uneasy truth that paradise must be earned, not inherited.

‘A tumultuous saga of family, love, secrets, history and yearning extending across the generations...Paradisos will make you want to explore the Aegean on a yacht and drink wine at midnight on a whitewashed patio.’

- Michael Nest, prize-winning author of Cold Case North: the search for James Brady and Absolom Halkett and Take Out the Jocks: a feminist revenge comedy.