August 7, 2018

Laura van den Berg

Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning writer LAURA VAN DEN BERG for a discussion of her latest book, The Third Hotel: A Novel. She will be joined in conversation by Harvard English lecturer and award-winning writer PAUL YOON.

Details

In Havana, Cuba, a widow tries to come to terms with her husband’s death―and the truth about their marriage―in Laura van den Berg’s surreal, mystifying story of psychological reflection and metaphysical mystery.

Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead. Grief-stricken and baffled, Clare tails Richard, a horror film scholar, through the newly tourist-filled streets of Havana, clocking his every move. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way. The Third Hotel is a propulsive, brilliantly shape-shifting novel from an inventive author at the height of her narrative powers.

About Author(s)

Laura van den Berg is the author of two story collections, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us and The Isle of Youth, and the novel Find Me. She is the recipient of a Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Bard Fiction Prize, an O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Colony fellowship. Born and raised in Florida, she lives in Cambridge, MA, with her husband and dog.

Paul Yoon was born in New York City. His first book, Once the Shore, was selected as a New York TimesNotable Book and a Best Debut of the Year by NPR. His novel, Snow Hunters, won the 2014 Young Lions Fiction Award. His latest collection, The Mountain: Stories, was a Best Books of 2017 Selection by NPR and Publishers Weekly. A recipient of a 5 under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation and a fellowship from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, he is currently a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard University along with his wife, the writer Laura van den Berg.