What Tomorrow Brings
with Thomas Wharton and Jaroslav Kalfar
Hosted by Kate Heartfield
In Person Fiction
Mixing fantasy, satire, horror, and metaphysics, A Brief History of Living Forever has many stories to tell. But the pulse animating each of them is the shock of sudden loss—of jobs, of loved ones, of a world you thought you knew. For all the jaunty quips or angry asides, the undertone is one of mourning . . . The delicacy of touch displayed here is reminiscent of the best of Milan Kundera.
International bestseller Kate Heartfield hosts two acclaimed authors whose novels interrogate tomorrow and ask us to take careful stock of the future we are building.
Thomas Wharton returns with The Book of Rain, a groundbreaking, deeply affecting work of environmental literary suspense. The northern mining town of River Meadows is one of three hotspots in the world producing ghost ore, a new source of energy worth twenty-eight times its weight in gold. It's also linked with slippages of time and space that gradually render the area uninhabitable. After the town is evacuated, the whole region is cordoned off, the new no-go zone wryly nicknamed “the Park.” Three intertwined stories flow from the disaster of River Meadows.
Jaroslav Kalfar, a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Spaceman of Bohemia joins us with his latest, A Brief History of Living Forever, a novel that exults in the love between a mother and her daughter. When Adéla discovers she has a terminal illness, she leaves behind her native Czech village for a chance at reuniting in America with Tereza, the daughter she gave up at birth, decades earlier. But the country Adéla experienced as a young woman, when she eloped with a filmmaker and starred in his cult sci-fi movie, has changed entirely. In 2030, America is ruled by an authoritarian government increasingly closed off to the rest of the world.
PLEASE NOTE: For the safety and comfort of all patrons, masks are strongly encouraged for those attending in person this Spring. Livestream tickets are available upon request for those who prefer to attend remotely.
Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books.
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