The Prime Minister of Paradise

by John Jeremiah Sullivan

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As a student working in the dusty archives of the Sewanee Review, John Jeremiah Sullivan came across an article entitled `Lost Utopia of the American Frontier' and was immediately hooked on the dramatic story of a lost book, an alternative history of the South, a white Indian. It was a story he'd chase for the next two decades.

In 1735, a charismatic German lawyer and accused atheist named Christian Gottlieb Priber fled Germany under threat of arrest, bound for colonial South Carolina. In the Cherokee village of Grand Tellico, he created a Utopian society that he named Paradise.

For six years, Paradise was governed by a set of revolutionary ideas that included racial equality, sexual freedom, and a lack of private property, ideas which he chronicled in a mysterious manuscript he called Paradise.

Priber's ideas were so subversive that he was hunted for half a decade and eventually captured by the British - making headlines across the world - and imprisoned until his death. The only copy of Paradise was apparently destroyed.

Now, in a rare combination of ground-breaking research and stunning narrative skill, award-winning writer John Jeremiah Sullivan brings that lost history vividly to life.
  • ISBN10 1448180791
  • ISBN13 9781448180790
  • Publish Date 6 June 2019
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher Vintage Publishing
  • Imprint Vintage Digital
  • Format eBook
  • Pages 250
  • Language English