The Alchemy of Paradise

In The Alchemy of Paradise, a curator 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.