In his foreword to The 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.
‘Like a collision between the fantastical libraries of Borges, David Markson’s art obsessed micronarratives and Iain Sinclair’s 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 fascination? More than a study of the labyrinth motif, The Ways of Paradise is itself a labyrinth, an apparently slim volume pulsing with infinite, overlapping worlds, an intricate meditation on the abysses of reality and illusion.’
— Josh Cohen, author of How to Live. What to Do.: In search of ourselves in life and literature
‘The Ways of Paradise is the story of a lost manuscript and the labyrinth of enigmas through which its obscure author wandered, a book that pleasurably situates the reader at the centre of the idea of fiction, a place of everything and nothing from which ever-widening circles of mystery and meaning spread out.’
— David Hayden, author of Darker With the Lights On
‘Just as any person tracking a spiral or walking a labyrinth will find their sense of space and time collapsed, viewing moments in the past and future of their journey from vividly altered perspectives as they make their way, so the reader of this remarkable ‘manuscript’ will be similarly enlightened. Open, allusive, constantly expanding its appreciation of the covert relations between culture and history, place and belief, The Ways of Paradise embodies its own utopian premise. Assembled with a lightness of touch and a precision in detail, profound in its accumulative insights, it understands that any book aspiring to the fullest incarnation of its potential remains in process more than it offers an arrival. No longer are fragments deployed only formally; rather they serve as waymarkers on a quest passage to the interior, the final labyrinth of human imagination, and the mind’s own mysterious corridors. The spaces between entries are where the doors to this charged site lie. Each traveller will find their own entrance, and each will surely be entranced.’
— Gareth Evans
‘In The Ways of Paradise, notes on a vanished text become clues into a mystery: if the world has a centre, what is located there? Traversing holy cities, land art and myths of eternal return, Peter Cornell leads us into a maze of profound depth, unlocked at last in Saskia Vogel’s exquisite translation.’
— Anna Della Subin, author of Accidental Gods
‘The Ways of Paradise is a work of art, an end in itself, a rich and enigmatic book.’
— Kristoffer Leandoer, Aftonbladet
‘The subjects are woven together in a way that is as intelligent as it is imaginative. Cornell’s book is proof of the author’s erudition ripened into wisdom. Cornell’s labyrinth lives and will live as long as there are readers.’
— Crispin Ahström, Göteborgs-Posten
‘With The Ways of Paradise, Swedish literature has been given something rare … in the fragmentary, anti-historical tradition that was Walter Benjamin’s.’
— Mikael Löfgren, Expressen
‘A stimulating and incredibly elegant anti-essay.’
— Jan Söderqvist, Svenska Dagbladet
‘Here is an author who has immediately taken a leading place among those who work with the non-linear style of writing that already has authorities such as Cortázar, Stanisław Lem and Borges.’
— Ivan Gorev, Literaturnaya Gazeta
Born in Stockholm in 1942, Peter Cornell is a writer, historian and art critic. He used to teach theory and history of modern art at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) and the Royal Institute of the Arts (Kungliga Konsthögskolan), and is an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts (Konstakademien). He writes regular contributions to publications on contemporary art such as the catalogue for Swedish Ecstasy, an exhibition that took place in Brussels last spring presenting several leading Swedish artists whose creations have in common a sense of mysticism and esoteric speculations.
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.
