In Paradise: A Novel. Vol. I.

On a luminous Sunday morning in Munich, the air still charged after a summer thunderstorm, a sculptor named Jansen works on his statue of a Bacchante. His model is Zenz, a young woman of simple background whose presence in the studio stirs something far more complex than professional arrangement. She is flattered by her transformation into art, yet intimated by the power the artist holds over her image, her identity, her very self. Into this charged atmosphere arrives Felix, Jansen's friend, whose arrival unravels hidden connections and past aspirations, suggesting that the relationships in this studio extend far deeper than mere posing and sculpting. Set against the intimate backdrop of the artist's workshop, where beauty is both created and contemplated, this novel explores the delicate negotiations between artist and subject, the economics of glance and gaze, and the ways art can redeem or consume those who devote themselves to it. For readers who savor the atmospheric pleasures of 19th-century European fiction, In Paradise offers a window into a world where every gesture might be art and every glance a kind of possession.