THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2017 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKENDS EVENT
The Astoria Bookshop is pleased to announce Books & Bites at RaR Bar with author Akhil Sharma on Wednesday, September 13th at 8 pm, in conjunction with the Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend programming. Books & Bites will feature a menu inspired by A Life of Adventure and Delight by Akhil Sharma. Each ticket includes one copy of Akhil Sharma’s new collection of short stories, A Life of Adventure and Delight and a one-night-only, five-course tasting menu created by chef and owner of RaR Bar, Tina Stipanovic. Akhil Sharma will open with a reading, and then sit with attendees at the communal table for dinner, answering questions and chatting. After dinner will be the signing.
A Life of Adventure and Delight is an engrossing window into the Indian experience at home and abroad. Akhil Sharma’s deeply perceptive collection of short stories weaves between India, New York, and New Jersey, profiling flawed characters as they stumble, repent, reform, and relapse. Wrestling with tradition and temptation, they long for belonging and meaning but veer inexorably toward self-destruction, doomed to repeat their mistakes. Sharma masterfully depicts how the burdens of family and culture shape our choices, whether or not we try to resist them.
Akhil Sharma is the author of Family Life, a New York Times Best Book of the Year and the winner of the International DUBLIN Literary Award and the Folio Prize. Sharma’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Best American Short Stories, and the O. Henry Award anthology. A native of Delhi, he lives in New York City and teaches English at Rutgers University–Newark.