Children Of Paradise Camilla Grudova by Camilla Grudova 9781838956325, 1838956328, B09QLMZBGD instant download after payment.

"An immersive, hallucinatory read set in a crumbling old cinema where the real & the imagined collide in fantastical fashion." – Irenosen Okojie, Judge, Women's Prize for Fiction

When Holly applies for a job at the Paradise - one of the city's oldest cinemas, squashed into the ground floor of a block of flats - she thinks it will be like any other shift work. She cleans toilets, sweeps popcorn, avoids the belligerent old owner, Iris, & is ignored by her aloof but tight-knit colleagues who seem as much a part of the building as its fraying carpets & endless dirt. Dreadful, lonely weeks pass while she longs for their approval, a silent voyeur. 

So when she finally gains the trust of this cryptic band of oddballs, Holly transforms from silent drudge to rebellious insider & gradually she too becomes part of the Paradise - unearthing its secrets, learning its history & haunting its corridors after hours with the other ushers. It is no surprise when violence strikes, tempers change and the group, eyes still affixed to the screen, starts to rapidly go awry...

"By no means short on destabilizing gothic detail, it is also fluent & transporting... utterly transporting..."  – Michael Kerrigan, TLS

"A remarkable & memorable achievement. To combine the gothic, the carnivalesque, the ghastly & the sublime in a relatively slender novel shows considerable talent indeed." – Scotland on Sunday

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Describe your novel in one sentence as if you were telling a friend.

Life in a decaying cinema.

What inspired you to write Children of Paradise?

Working as an usher at a cinema & all the dark & interesting things I saw. Also, my love of film. The book is named after the film Les Enfants du Paradis by Marcel Carne.