What if your soul mate isn't encountered once in a lifetime but once in millennia? <br><i><br></i>From the unique imagination of the author of the <i>Ring</i> trilogy, which inspired blockbuster films on both sides of the Pacific, comes an unconventional love story that finds the Japanese master delivering a pure page-turner outside the horror genre. Comprising three distinct parts each of which is a tale of adventure, <i>Paradise</i> demonstrates that the sinister poet of humidity who made use of wetness to raise chills in <i>Dark Water</i> is just as much in his element plotting adrenalin-fueled searches across the desert.<br><br>In the arid badlands of prehistoric Asia, a lovelorn youth violates a sacred tribal taboo against representing human figures by etching an image of his beloved. When the foretold punishment comes to pass, the two must embark on a journey across the world, and time itself, to try to reclaim their destiny. A mysterious spirit guides them towards a surprise destination that readers may indeed find quite close to home.<br><br>Published a year before <i>Ring</i>, <i>Paradise</i> was Koji Suzuki's groundbreaking first novel that launched his career as a fiction writer. Winner of the Japan Fantasy Award, it was immediately made into an animated TV series. Filled with exotic locales, betrayal, action, romance, and ideas, <i>Paradise</i> should delight fans of David Mitchell's <i>Cloud Atlas</i> as well as devotees of the non-horror fare of Stephen King, to whom Suzuki is frequently compared.