Paul Harding’s This Other Eden, shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, is based on a relatively unknown true story about a tiny community descended from trafficked Africans, immigrant Irish and indigenous Penobscot, scrabbling a living on an Island off the coast of Maine, and what happens when it is targeted for ‘cleansing’ by eugenics-minded authorities in the Summer of 1912. Edoardo Ballerini, who reads the audio version of the book, narrates some passages. Paul Harding discusses the tyranny of purity and the indomitable struggle for survival with Geoffrey Harpham, author of Citizenship on Catfish Row.