Post Type Archives: VBC Events

In the two centuries since its publication in 1816, Jane Austen’s Emma has won over readers worldwide because of its charm, insights, and what the Italians call sprezzatura: an untranslatable word that means having an effortless-seeming light touch, while masking serious thought and depth below the surface. Before she began the novel, Austen wrote, “I am going to […]

Recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, Trust was also long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2022 and named a New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book that same year. Set in the Jazz Age of the 1920s that is familiar to readers of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Diaz’s novel centers on the multiple perspectives – and narrative […]

From the date of its publication in 1948, Paton’s novel has been considered a landmark work exposing the cruelties of racism and and segregation. The book was an immediate success and has gone on to sell more than 15 million copies in 20 languages; it has also been the inspiration for films and a Broadway […]

As the author myself of a book on the fascinating history and culture of Calabria, Italy, My Two Italies – which Marra graciously mentioned in his Acknowledgments – I was immediately drawn to this contemporary novel about how a female immigrant from this poor region of southern Italy was able to transform Hollywood’s male power structure. But Mercury Pictures […]

The name – and the writing – of this author is perhaps already familiar to many of you. Rushdie burst onto the literary scene in 1981 with his remarkable Midnight’s Children, a fictional account of India’s transition from British colonial rule to independence and then partition. Winner of the “Best of the Booker,” the novel is […]