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The Paradox of Paradise

Author: T. K. Rouse

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2002-03

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1401030114

As a child, Katia Barnes has a recurring nightmare. In the dream, she is a young Victorian woman, alone in a dark house at twilight, desperately searching for something. She is caught by surprise by a man with a pistol. A chase ensues, and she is killed. Katia wakes up in terror, knowing she has just experienced this woman´s death. The dream eventually fades away, but always remains in the back of her mind. Katia becomes a romance novelist, and after churning out the same book thirty times over, becomes disenchanted with her chosen genre. Her father dies, leaving her an unexpected legacy; an old Rosedale mansion left to him by a mysterious, unknown aunt. Immediately upon seeing the house, Katia recognizes it as the same one from her childhood dream. The Victorian house is named Eden. Inspired by its sense of mystery, Katia moves in, and starts renovations, planning to open a Bed and Breakfast. Soon, she finds out what she has in fact inherited is a former Victorian brothel. Katia also finds a trunk full of diaries, written by a woman named Adela, who lived in the house from 1899 to 1912. Katia starts reading the diaries, becoming obsessed with them. Adela was born in Cairo, Egypt, the illegitimate daughter of a British newspaper correspondent, and an Egyptian bellydancer. Her mother dies when she is a small child, and she and her brother are taken to England by their father. Victorian London is not kind to Adela, she is considered "half-African", and shunned. As a young woman, Adela journeys to Canada to start a new life. On board the ship, she meets Doctor Anthony Maxwell, a wealthy Canadian businessman, who has a unique philosophy based upon ancient Egypt. They fall in love, deciding to marry upon their arrival in Montréal. However, Adela gets more than she bargained for. Not only is Maxwell bisexual, he also has a sideline providing "courtesans" for Toronto´s elite. Katia is engrossed by the diaries, and discovers many unusual features in the house; a secret passageway, for one. Strange paranormal experiences begin to happen. Katia calls upon her friend Raine, who is a psychic. Raine advises Katia that it is her "Karma" to clean up a mess from the past, and in doing so, she will find her own life will be changed for the better. The diaries lead Katia on a mystical journey of discovery, unveiling her family´s hidden past. Adela´s story reveals many "dirty secrets" of Victorian/Edwardian Toronto; a world of extremes in both wealth and poverty, widespread narcotics use, racism, and the many problems and struggles faced by women. The Paradox of Paradise is rich in substance, covering a spectrum of life topics; history, philosophy, love, heartache, sexuality, and the paranormal. Through a strange journey, the two heroines´ lives become intertwined. Katia solves most of the mystery, except for the most important part; who killed Adela, and why? The answer comes in an ending with a twist, which does indeed change Katia´s life. Katia discovers the meaning of "The Paradox of Paradise".

Moving to the Dominican Republic

Author: Ross Weber

Publisher:

Published: 2009-09-01

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9781449532031

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Moving to the Dominican Republic: The Paradox of Paradise is the hilarious yet serious story of an American moving to the Dominican Republic. It is a must read for anyone who has wondered what it would be like to live in the Caribbean. Ross Weber uses humor and real life experiences to describe the culture shock and other setbacks of making the transition from living in the United States to living in the Dominican Republic. Ross includes personal stories as well as unique observations to describe the ups and downs of living on an Island. If you have visited the Dominican Republic you will love this book. If you are planning to go to the Dominican Republic, the great lessons in this book will help you prepare. If you are interested in international living, or possibly retiring in the Caribbean, this is the perfect book for you!

Queering and Querying the Paradise of Paradox

Author: Steven F. Butterman

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-06-02

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 1538150891

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This book provides readers with a study of the characteristics that make life unique for sexual minorities in Brazil while also viewing Brazil in relation to global LGBT sociopolitical movements. It critically assesses the complex relationship(s) between the visual arts and political activism, carefully analyzing artistic, cinematic, and photographic representations of LGBTQ identities. Brazil provides a useful case to example, with the cultivation of ambiguity in contemporary (re)constructions of queer life. In this book, the author conducts the first comprehensive discourse analysis of the dynamics and features of the largest LGBT Pride Parade in the world. This problematizes and analyzes the relationship between burgeoning critical socio-political movements and institutions and the language and new media discourses used to configure and conceptualize them. The aim of this project is to create a theoretical scholarly framework promoting linkages between political activism and academic scholarship and by using discourse analysis, the intricacies of terminology Brazilian sexual minorities adopt and adapt, illustrating the development of LGBTQ identities through performative language use.

Paradoxes of Paradise

Author: Francis Landy

Publisher: Sheffield Phoenix Press Limited

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 9781906055417

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Rabbi Akiba is famously reported to have said, 'Heaven forbid that any one in Israel ever disputed that the Song of Songs is holy, for the whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies'. This book is an extended elaboration of Rabbi Akiba's statement. It argues that the Song is a Hellenistic composition, drawing on the resources of ancient Near Eastern erotic poetry and characterized by a complex though fragile unity. Through the metaphors, the lovers progressively see themselves reflected in each other, as well as in the world about them and the poetry of love. The poem celebrates the land of Israel in spring, an ideal humanity, and a perfected language. It culminates in the contestation of love and death, and the assertion that only love survives the exigencies of time. The pervasive ambiguity of the Song, in which one never quite knows what happens, is related to the ambivalence of beauty, which is closely related to ugliness. Hence the surrealist imagery of the Song verges upon the grotesque and stretches the resources of our imagination. Through a detailed comparison with the Garden of Eden story, Landy argues that the Song is a vision of paradise seen from the outside, through the ironic poetic gaze, in a world potentially hostile or indifferent.

The Paradox of Paradise

Author: William Nichols

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press

Published: 2024-01-31

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 0826506240

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The Paradox of Paradise focuses on the trajectory of urban coastal tourism in Spain from the late Franco years to the present through the lens of Spanish cultural production. "Sun and fun" destinations like Torremolinos (located in the Costa del Sol) and Benidorm (located in the Costa Blanca) established a model for urban renewal that literally built the coasts to accommodate and expand foreign tourism as the driving force of the so-called Spanish Economic Miracle. In addition to inserting the coasts into the scope of Iberian urban studies (typically dominated by studies of Madrid and Barcelona), this project breaks new ground by bringing to the fore unexplored cultural artifacts vital to the narrative of development along the coasts in Spain—in particular the ubiquitous tourist postcard, which advances not only the post-Franco economic miracle, but does so by highlighting the transformation of the actual Spanish landscape along its coasts. The Paradox of Paradise features more than twenty-five striking images of coastal Spain in the throes of its own coming of age. Author William J. Nichols has unlocked a strange, self-conscious archive that tells us as much about our own age of advertising as it does about the hotels and resorts and people on display.

The Edge of Paradise

Author: Paul Frederick Kluge

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 1993-01-01

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780824815677

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In 1967 the Peace Corps sent P. F. Kluge to paradise - or so the American possessions in Micronesia seemed. His assignment was as noble as it was adventurous: to help the people of those half-forgotten Pacific islands move from old to new, so that paradise would have prosperity and freedom as well as physical beauty. He immersed himself in the lives of the diverse peoples of the islands. He composed speeches for their leaders. He wrote a stirring manifesto that became the Preamble to the Constitution of Micronesia. He began a friendship with a man who would one day be president of Palau. And then, a generation later, P. F. Kluge went back. . . . The result is a book the New Yorker called "remarkably effective," the Economist deemed "terrific"; a book Smithsonian Magazine found to be "written from the heart." The Edge of Paradise shows the impact and ironies of America's presence in an undeveloped part of the world, how perhaps there's no way "a big place can touch a little one without harming it."

The Moral Paradox of Paradise Lost

Author: John E. Seaman

Publisher: Hague : Mouton

Published: 1971

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13:

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Maps of Paradise

Author: Alessandro Scafi

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-02-15

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 022610608X

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Where is paradise? It always seems to be elsewhere, inaccessible, outside of time. Either it existed yesterday or it will return tomorrow; it may be just around the corner, on a remote island, beyond the sea. Across a wide range of cultures, paradise is located in the distant past, in a longed-for future, in remote places or within each of us. In particular, people everywhere in the world share some kind of nostalgia for an innocence experienced at the beginning of history. For two millennia, learned Christians have wondered where on earth the primal paradise could have been located. Where was the idyllic Garden of Eden that is described in the Bible? In the Far East? In equatorial Africa? In Mesopotamia? Under the sea? Where were Adam and Eve created in their unspoiled perfection? Maps of Paradise charts the diverse ways in which scholars and mapmakers from the eighth to the twenty-first century rose to the challenge of identifying the location of paradise on a map, despite the certain knowledge that it was beyond human reach. Over one hundred illustrations celebrate this history of a paradox: the mapping of the unmappable. It is also a mirror to the universal dream of perfection and happiness, and the yearning to discover heaven on earth.

Paradise Dogs

Author: Man Martin

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2011-06-07

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9781429990240

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Adam Newman once had it all. But then he lost it. Now Adam yearns to reunite with his estranged wife, Evelyn, and recapture the Edenic life they once had running Paradise Dogs, the roadside hot-dog restaurant now legendary throughout central Florida. He has a few obstacles along the way. For starters, there's his impending marriage to Lily. There's also the matter of a quarter million dollars' worth of diamonds that he mislaid, along with what appears to be a shadowy conspiracy that is buying up land around the Cross-Florida Canal (and which may or may not be a product of Adam's alcohol-infused imagination). Despite his own troubles---and a brief stay in Chattahoochee---Adam looks to mentor his son, Addison, in the ways of love. Awkward, unsure, and employed as the world's least accurate obituary writer, Addison pines for a beautiful and painfully earnest linguistic student but must compete for her attention with his older and more sophisticated half brother from Evelyn's first marriage. But if anybody can set these worlds in order, it is Adam, who has an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time and allowing others to believe he's someone he's not. Whether it's delivering a baby, rescuing a marriage, or exposing a Communist conspiracy, our protagonist is up for the job. Paradise Dogs, from Georgia Author of the Year Award winner Man Martin, is a farcical tale of paradise lost, the American Dream, and the true measures of love

The Paradox of Choice

Author: Barry Schwartz

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2003-12-22

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0060005688

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Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions -- both big and small -- have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice -- the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish -- becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice -- from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs -- has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.