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From the daring Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Jennifer Egan, this program will enter the world of The Candy House, her "sibling novel" to A Visit from the Goon Squad. In spellbinding interlocking narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of "Own Your Unconscious," a fictional foray into the idea of a technology that allows us access to every memory we’ve ever had, and to share these memories in exchange for access to the memories of others. Through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades, this intellectually dazzling story is also extraordinarily moving, a testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter and a chapter of tweets. If Goon Squad was organized like a concept album, The Candy House incorporates Electronic Dance Music’s more disjunctive approach. Join us as the two extraordinary literary voices of Jennifer Egan and Danzy Senna walk us through The Candy House and its bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away.
Jennifer Egan is the author of six previous books of fiction: Manhattan Beach, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Keep; the story collection Emerald City; Look at Me, a National Book Award Finalist; and The Invisible Circus. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Granta, McSweeney's, and The New York Times Magazine.
Danzy Senna rose to international literary fame in 1998 with her extraordinary first novel, Caucasia. Since then, she has become one of today's most timely and respected literary voices, consistently challenging our culture's defined states of race, class, and gender norms. A favorite with universities and libraries, Senna speaks about her craft as both a memoirist and fiction writer and the timely themes that define her acclaimed books.
