Post Type Archives: VBC Events

Roth’s 1932 novel is a sumptuous recreation of the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Habsburg Monarchy on the cusp of World War I, as narrated through the generational saga of the Trottas, a prominent and aristocratic military family. As we read in the publisher’s description, a deep sense of nostalgia and historical rupture permeates […]

Kelhmann is considered one of the most important voices in world literature, and The Director has garnered considerable acclaim. It has been longlisted for the Booker Prize and selected as both a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year and a Washington Post Notable Book. The Wall Street Journal described it as “nothing short of brilliant.” As we read in the […]

Kitamura is widely acclaimed, and Audition was an instant bestseller and named a “2025 Essential Read” by the New Yorker. It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and recognized as a “book of the year” by the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New Republic, and many others. As we read in the publisher’s description, the novel is all about “acting” […]

VBC members may recall our earlier event in 2022 on Williams’s Stoner, which was largely overlooked until a timely reissuing of the novel by the New York Review of Books Classics in 2006. In Augustus, Williams achieves the rarest of feats: a rigorously researched historical reconstruction of a distant past, ancient Rome, that feels marvelously “contemporary,” through its vivid […]

As we see from the publisher’s description, The Razor’s Edge is the ultimate “quest” narrative – in this case, the journey as much interior as external: Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham’s most brilliant characters – his fiancee Isabel, whose […]