Consider this your invitation to read and discuss narrative nonfiction with us! In the Narrative Nonfiction Book Club we will be reading across the genres of nonfiction, from history to adventure, memoir/biography, and beyond with books that read like a novel.
Join us on Saturday, September 6th at 11am in the Hermann room as we discuss our latest book pick, 2024 National Book Award Finalist, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie.
This book club is free to the public and copies of the book are available at the circulation and adult service desks one month prior to our book club meeting. To register to attend, CLICK HERE.
Knife Synopsis:
“From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring a brutal attempt on his life, thirty years after the fatwa that was order against him.”
“On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man wearing black clothes and a black mask rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.
What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.
Knife is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literatur’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art – and finding the strength to stand up again.”
About the Author:
“Salman Rushdie is the author of fifteen novels, including Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize; a collection of stories, East, West; a memoir, Joseph Anton; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, most recently Languages of Truth. His many awards include the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, which he won twice; the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award; the National Arts Award; the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger; the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature; the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature; and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University, and a former president of PEN America. His books have been translated into over forty languages.”
House of Diggs is the first biography of Congressman Charles C. Diggs Jr., one of the most consequential Black federal legislators in US history whose unfortunate downfall punctuated his distinguished career and pushed him and his historic accomplishments out of sight. Come hear award-winning author Dr. Orr speak about how his biography, House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr., restores Congressman Diggs to his much-deserved place in the history of American politics.
