Eden's Shore

'Fagan is shaping up to be one of the most dazzling and daring stylists around' Guardian, Books of the Year 2025

Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2026

At the close of the eighteenth century, Angel Kelly, an Irishman, sets sail from Liverpool aboard the Atlas with the intention of creating a Utopian commune in Brazil. But when a mutiny takes place on the ship, he finds himself stranded upon the coast of an unnamed Spanish colony in Latin America. In the aftermath, Kelly becomes unwittingly caught up in a series of crises culminating in displacement, rebellion and a deadly game of cat-and-mouse between empires.

Set in an era of global upheaval, Eden's Shore is an epic and intricate tale of greed, revenge and love. Populated by a vivid and rich cast of revolutionaries and pirates, capitalists and aristocrats, sailors and soldiers, slaves and spies, this is a work of staggering ambition and wondrous imagination.

'Visceral, propulsive, kinetic' Colin Walsh, author of Kala

'Wild, dark and free-wheeling ' Ferdia Lennon, author of Glorious Exploits