As the Festive Season begins, we invite you to a literary soiree centred upon one of the most amazing Romanian literary breakthroughs in recent times. Politician-turned-author Varujan Vosganian talks about his powerful novel “The Book of Whispers”, published by Yale University Press. He is joined by Rosie Goldsmith, the eloquent suprema of European literary promotion in the UK. Translated into English by the indefatigable Alistair Ian Blyth, this internationally successful novel follows the troubled history and journey of an Armenian family from their ancestral home, through tragedy and exile, to redemption in their new home in Romania.
“We suffer from collective amnesia, we don’t learn from our past horrors. Fiction, perhaps, exists to guide us there where we have allowed our memory to fail. Through family recollections, public accounts and factual reports, Varujan Vosganian has built an extraordinary novel that is also a memory machine. After reading “The Book of Whispers” we can no longer deny this shameful chapter of our common past.”— writer Alberto Manguel, author of “The Library at Night”
Admission is free, but places are limited. Please confirm your attendance here.