VCCA Fellow Helen Benedict's fifth novel, The Edge of Eden, is out today from Soho Press. Inspired by her parents' anthropological field notes, the book is set in 1960, on the tropical Seychelles Islands, a thousand miles off the eastern coast of Africa. Benedict's lush descriptions of life on the islands are  firmly based in the realities of the time. The role of black magic in Seychelles culture, passed down from the country's past as a former slave colony, the decaying culture of British colonialism's last gasp -- these form the background of this witty, sharp and yet heartbreaking novel about a family unraveling and a child's desperate attempts to save it. For more information: www.helenbenedict.com

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