Virtual Book Talk - After the Sun

Join Scandinavia House on September 8 for a virtual book talk on the new novel After the Sun with author Jonas Eika and translator Sherilynn Hellberg! With moderator Katrine Øgaard Jensen, they’ll discuss the author’s American fiction debut, winner of the 2019 Nordic Council Literary Prize and out in translation by Hellberg on August 24 from Riverhead Books.

After the Sun introduces a constellation of characters embedded in wildly different points around our deeply unequal and profoundly entangled planet, from beach boys working the tourist-lined beaches of Cancún to a grieving man who attempts to merge with an alien machine in the Nevada desert. Whatever the settings or circumstances, some of which take off in surreal directions, everyone we encounter in After the Sun is at a tipping point. The realities they share—capitalist exploitation, grief, addiction, toxic masculinity—may be painful and inescapable, but still they find moments of liberation, authenticity, tenderness, and exhilaration, with one another, and in their surroundings. As Eika puts it: “The potential for transformation–or liberation, even–has to be found in the cracks: the cracks in subjectivity, the body, in the small gaps in an otherwise totalizing exploitative system.”

This event will take place as a Zoom webinar; please ask questions in the chat or send them in advance to info@amscan.org. Registration is required; please sign up at the link.

“Political fictions aren’t supposed to be this personal. Satires aren’t supposed to be this heartbreaking. Surrealism isn’t supposed to be this real. Giving a damn isn’t supposed to be this fun. From sleights of hand to shocks to the heart, After the Sun is doing all the things you don’t expect it to, and leaving a big bold mark on what we call literature.” —Marlon James