Alchemy of Paradise

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A01=Susannah M. Smith
alchemy
aphoristic novel
art
Author_Susannah M. Smith
bildungsroman
Category=FBA
Category=FKW
collecting
collections
creativity
death
England
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
fictional memoir
forthcoming
grief
hermeticism
hybrid genre
immortality
insomnia literaria
Leanne Shapton
loss
meditation
metaphysics
ontology
Patti Smith
philosophy
poetry
spirituality
transformation
Venice
W.G. Sebald
Walter Benjamin

Product details

  • ISBN 9781778430855
  • Publication Date: 25 Jun 2026
  • Publisher: Invisible Publishing
  • Publication City/Country: CA
  • Product Form: Paperback
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In The Alchemy of Paradise, a curator-narrator confronts grief, loss, and mortality by arranging the fragments of her life—objects, memories, impressions—into a fragile order.

Set in contemporary England, with Venice shimmering at its core, the book follows her attempt to preserve what might otherwise vanish, shaping a collection that makes survival possible. When order fails to yield meaning, she turns to the alchemical, where matter shifts into metaphor and loss becomes transformation.

A novel of ideas told through poetic essays and reflections, The Alchemy of Paradise explores the tension between collecting and transmuting, order and disorder. In the spirit of Walter Benjamin’s collections, and in dialogue with writers like W.G. Sebald, Patti Smith, and Leanne Shapton, it meditates the ways that art and imagination allow us to chart personal maps through the universal yet individual territories of loss. Refusing collapse into despair, The Alchemy of Paradise offers curation itself as a restless, ongoing practice of creation and renewal.

Susannah M. Smith is the author of The Fairy Tale Museum (Invisible Publishing) and How the Blessed Live (Coach House Books). Her short fiction, poetry, and visual art have appeared in various publications. She lives in Vancouver.

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