Advertisement
“A funerary poem about a bird flying underground; a psychodrama of two sisters drowning in the mirror of memory; a center of a necrophilic labyrinth; Virginia Woolf’s Rhoda lost in John Hawkes’s Travesty. Pilar Adon’s novel is the most haunting I have read in years.” —Mircea Cărtărescu, author of SolenoidThird Place Books is thrilled to welcome Pilar Adón to our Ravenna neighborhood store! Adón will be discussing her latest novel, Of Beasts and Fowls, the winner of Spain’s Premio Nacional de Narrativa in 2023 and translated from Spanish by Katie Whittemore. This event is free and open to the public.
Pilar Adón is the publisher of Editorial Impedimenta in Spain and translator of works of fiction and essays by authors such as John Fowles, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Penelope Fitzgerald. Editorial Impedimenta is the the Spanish publisher of authors such as Hernan Diaz, Georgi Gospodinov, Maryse Conde, and T.C. Boyle.
For important updates, registration is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!
About Of Beasts and Fowls. . .
Summer is ending and Coro, an artist frightened of what her paintings of her dead sister may represent, gets in her car one night and starts to drive, with no plan or destination. After a wrong turn down a narrow dirt road, she runs out of gas outside the gates of a large and isolated house called Bethany, a place inhabited exclusively by a small group of women who seem to exist in a closed, hierarchical system a world apart. The women of Bethany live closely with the natural and animal world, celebrate rites and rituals, and, like devotees of an ancestral cult, all dress the same. Most unsettlingly, they seem to know who Coro is already. In fact, they have been expecting her.
How the women came to live in Bethany, why they believe Coro is destined to be there, and most pressing, why won’t they let her leave are questions Coro must face as she struggles between the instinct to escape and the sense that something larger is at work.
When Bethany’s careful balance is disturbed—with violent consequences—by the appearance of a mysterious man who claims the house and land are his, Coro will find herself forced to meet her own ghosts, reckon with her choices, and accept that Bethany might just be where she belongs.
Winner of Spain’s Premio Nacional de Narrativa in 2023, Of Beasts and Fowls introduces a grand talent new to English audiences in a haunting novel rife with natural descriptions, signs and symbols, and a sense of the uncanny.
Praise for Of Beasts and Fowls. . .
“Pilar Adón's writing … [is] literature in its purest form, and the novel Of Beasts and Fowls only confirms it.”
—José María Pozuelo Yvancos, ABC Cultural
“A novel like Of Beasts and Fowls is a book that everyone who loves literature should read.”
—Carlos Pardo, Babelia
“Fascination and unease are the feelings that dominate the reader of this splendid novel in which the writer plunges us back into her particular universe.”
—Juan Marqués, Reading
“Those who approach Pilar Adón's writing for the first time will find themselves immersed in a mysterious and suffocating reality. [In Of Beasts and Fowls] everything is marked from the very beginning with the most overwhelming sense of the unusual.”
—Santos Sanz Villanueva, El Cultural
“Adón has built a unique literary world with devices, spaces, and characters, as well as with her own rhetoric and themes and motifs, which set her apart from the rest of contemporary authors.”
—Fernando Valls, InfoLibre
Pilar Adón was born in Madrid in 1971. She has published the novels Of Beasts and Fowls, which was awarded the Premio Nacional de Narrativa, the Premio de la Crítica, the Francisco Umbral Prize to the Best Book of the Year, and the Cálamo Otra Mirada Prize; The Mayflies, which was considered one of the ten best novels the year, and Las hijas de Sara. She has published three books of short stories (La vida sumergida, El mes más cruel, and Viajes inocenteas, which was awarded the RNE Ojo Crítico Prize), the illustrated long story 'Eterno amor,' and the books of poems Da dolor, Las órdenes (awarded the Book of the Year Prize by the Association of Bookshops of Madrid), Mente animal, and La hija del Cazador. Pilar Adón is also the publisher of Impedimenta Books and translator of works of fiction and essays by authors such as John Fowles, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Penelope Fitzgerald.
Want a signed edition of the featured book, but can't make it to the event? Order through our website or over the phone, and write your request for a signature or personalization in the comments field at checkout. Please call the hosting store if you're placing your order within 24 hours of the event.
Third Place Books Events Code of Conduct: Third Place Books is committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of event attendees and guest authors, during both online and in-store events. By registering for this event, you are agreeing to refrain from engaging in inappropriate behavior and harassment of any kind throughout the course of this event (i.e. racial slurs, profanity, hate speech, spam comments, etc.). Please note that any participants who engage in inappropriate behavior or harassment of any kind will be immediately ejected from the event.
For media inquiries, access inquiries, or questions about our Covid-19 policies, please email [email protected] or call our Lake Forest Park store at (206) 366-3311.
Advertisement
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, United States, Washington 98115
Tickets
