Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014) is the only writer who has ever won the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction. His travels as a naturalist and explorer resulted in more than a dozen books on natural history and the environment, including THE SNOW LEOPARD, his first NBA winner. Matthiessen’s equally important career in fiction produced a collection of stories and nine novels, among them AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF THE LORD (an NBA finalist) and the Everglades trilogy (KILLING MISTER WATSON, LOST MAN'S RIVER and BONE BY BONE), which, rewritten and distilled, were published in one volume in 2008 under the title SHADOW COUNTRY, winner of the NBA in fiction. SHADOW COUNTRY was also the 2010 recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal, given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the most distinguished American novel published during the previous five years. Matthiessen was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His final novel, IN PARADISE, was published just after his death in 2014.

Books by Peter Matthiessen

In Paradise

by Peter Matthiessen - Fiction

In the winter of 1996, more than a hundred individuals gather at the site of a former concentration camp for a weeklong retreat. They will offer prayer and witness at the crematoria, while eating and sleeping in the quarters of the Nazi officers who sent more than a million Jews to their deaths. Clements Olin, an American academic of Polish descent, is forced to abandon his observer’s role and embrace a history his family has long suppressed.