Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

An "ambitious, fascinating, and richly detailed" work of fiction inspired by the real-life, 37-year friendship between two towering figures of the late nineteenth century— famed writer and humorist Mark Twain and legendary explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley: "In a class by itself" (Gay Talese).

Hijuelos was fascinated by the Twain-Stanley connection and eventually began researching and writing a novel that used the scant historical record of their relationship as a starting point for a more ...