Porter Square Books is thrilled to welcome Simon Van Booy, author of The Presence of Absence, for an author talk and signing at the store.
This event will take place on Saturday, November 12 at 4pm at Porter Square Books (25 White St. Cambridge, MA 02140). Masks are required for all attending. RSVPs, while not required, are strongly encouraged- scroll down to RSVP below!
About the Book
As a writer lies dying, he has one last story to tell: a tale of faith and devotion, a meditation on what lies beyond this life, and a prayer of gratitude that may lead to rebirth. This is Simon Van Booy at his visionary best.
"Language is a map leading to a place not on the map," announces a young writer lying in a hospital bed at the beginning of The Presence of Absence. As he contemplates his impending physical disappearance and the impact on his beloved wife, he realizes, "Life doesn't start when you're born . . . it begins when you commit yourself to the eventual devastating loss that results from connecting to another person."
Infused with poetic clarity and graced with humor, Simon Van Booy's innovative novella asks the reader to find beauty--even gratitude--in the cycle of birth and death. Stripped of artifice, The Presence of Absence is a meditation between the writer and the reader, an imaginative work that challenges the deceit of written words and explores our strongest emotions.
Simon Van Booy is not only a master storyteller but a writer whose fiction is rich with philosophical insights into things both mapped and undiscovered. The Presence of Absence parts the darkness to reveal what has been just out of sight all along.
Simon Van Booy is the award-winning and best-selling author of fifteen books that include: Night Came with Many Stars, The Secret Lives of People in Love (short-listed for the Vilcek Prize), Love Begins in Winter (awarded the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award), Everything Beautiful Began After, The Illusion of Separateness, Tales of Accidental Genius, Father's Day, The Sadness of Beautiful Things (short-listed for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize), two novels for children, Gertie Milk & The Keeper of Lost Things and Gertie Milk & The Great Keeper Rescue, along with three anthologies of philosophy, Why We Fight, Why Our Decisions Don't Matter and Why We Need Love.
He has written for The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, National Public Radio, the BBC, and the Chinese edition of ELLE. His books have been translated into many languages and optioned for film.
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