Cover art for Paradise Garden
Published
Indigo Press, September 2025
ISBN
9781911648956
Format
Softcover, 304 pages
Dimensions
19.8cm × 12.9cm

Paradise Garden

Not yet released
Due September 1, 2025.
Fast $7.95 flat-rate shipping!
Only pay $7.95 per order within Australia, including end-to-end parcel tracking.
100% encrypted and secure
We adhere to industry best practice and never store credit card details.
Talk to real people
Contact us seven days a week – our staff are here to help.

The beginning was the last day before the summer holidays. The beginning was a song on the radio. The beginning was big plans.

Fourteen-year-old Billie rarely crosses the boundaries of her high-rise housing estate. By the end of the month their money just about stretches to pasta with ketchup, but her mother, Marika, lights up Billie's world with her imagination and big heart.

One day they receive an unwelcome visit from her Hungarian grandmother, and Billie loses much more than the colourful everyday life she shared with her mother. No longer able to ask Marika questions, Billie sets off alone in their old Nissan determined to meet the father she never knew and find out why she keeps dreaming about the sea, even though she's never been there.

Longlisted for the German Book Prize 2023, Paradise Garden is a spellbinding journey and a deeply affecting story of class, resilience and belonging.

'Elena Fischer writes so lovingly about sadness that it is comforting.' Alina Bronsky

'An accomplished debut about the courage to get to know one's own origins and to accept them as they are.' Ursula Nowak for Deutschlandfunk, Cologne

'This novel is a small miracle and a big surprise.' Claudio Armbuster / ZDF, Mainz

Related books