War and the Novel

 

May 1, 2010 | Scandinavia House | New York City

With Bernardo Atxaga, Filip Florian, Assaf Gavron, and Atiq Rahimi; moderated by Susan Kuklin

Co-sponsored by The American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy

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Filip Florian’s novel Little Fingers imagines the discovery of a mass grave in a small town. Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone depicts a woman who must nurse her husband while besieged by violence in Afghanistan. In CrocAttack, Assaf Gavron invents a reluctant media celebrity, famous because he did not die in a terrorist attack. And Bernardo Atxaga, in The Accordionist’s Son, has revisited the Spanish Civil War and examined its long repercussions. Why have novelists so long been drawn to the subject of war? And how do writers engage with this fraught and complicated subject? Join novelists from Afghanistan, Spain, Romania, and Israel as they discuss these and many other questions.