About this Event
Please join us in store on Friday, March 14th at 7:00pm to help celbrate Mark Haber's newest novel, Lesser Ruins . Mark will be in conversation with Amanda Goldblatt! Javier is a HUGE fan of Mark's previous novel, Saint Sebastian's Abyss, so we are extra excited to host Mark!
About Lesser Ruins:
Bereft after the death of his ailing wife, a retired professor has resumed his life's work--a book that will stand as a towering cathedral to Michel de Montaigne, reframing the inventor of the essay for the modern age. The challenge is the litany of intrusions that bar his way--from memories of his past to the nattering of smartphones to his son's relentless desire to make an electronic dance album.
As he sifts through the contents of his desk, his thoughts pulsing and receding in a haze of caffeine, ghosts and grievances spill out across the page. From the community college where he toiled in vain to an artists' colony in the Berkshires, from the endless pleasures of coffee to the finer points of Holocaust art, the professor's memories churn with sculptors, poets, painters, and inventors, all obsessed with escaping both mediocrity and themselves.
Laced with humor as acrid as it is absurd, Lesser Ruins is a spiraling meditation on ambition, grief, and humanity's ecstatic, agonizing search for meaning through art.
About the authors:
Mark Haber was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Florida. His debut novel, Reinhardt’s Garden (2019, Coffee House Press), was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His second novel, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss (2022, Coffee House Press), was named a best book of 2022 by the New York Public Library and Literary Hub. Mark's fiction has appeared in Guernica, Southwest Review, and Air/Light, among others. Mark lives in Minneapolis.
Amanda Goldblatt is the author of the novel Hard Mouth. Her fiction and essays can be found at Guernica, Chicago Review, Fence, and elsewhere. She has been a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, and currently teaches at Northeastern Illinois University.
About this event:
This is a free, in person event and registration is required. Please click on the link below to register for free. Mark will be happy to sign/personalize copies of his books after the event! Can't make it to the event? Signed copies will be available in store and online after the event.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Exile in Bookville, 410 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, United States
USD 0.00
