In three astonishing new novels, the past hovers over the present like a ghost. In Italian writer Andrea Bajani’s If You Kept a Record of Sins (translated by Elizabeth Harris), a mother’s abandonment lingers on in the memory of her grown son. Meanwhile, the protagonist of Sri Lankan author Anuk Arudpragasam’s A Passage North, contends with the echoes of the country’s thirty-year civil war. And in Haitian writer Myriam J.A. Chancy’s What Storm, What Thunder, the island’s devastating 2010 earthquake is recalled with an eerie relevance. Moderated by Anderson Tepper.
This event is made possible with support through the Cultural Immigrant Initiative, a program of the New York City Council.
