Mayor Will Wynn announced today the selection for the eighth annual Mayor’s Book Club, the citywide reading program that aims to get Austinites reading and talking about the same book. Following the international bent of last year’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, this year’s selection – the last of Wynn’s term – is Dalia Sofer’s debut novel The Septembers of Shiraz, which was inspired by her childhood in Iran. The book will be widely available at Austin Public Library branches and local bookstores. April will be devoted to book clubs and related lectures, culminating in an April 24 event at City Hall with Sofer.
Named as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, The Septembers of Shiraz is described in an APL press release thusly:
“It’s a fascinating story of one family’s unique struggles rooted within the context of a radically changing Iran. Their Judaism has marked them with imminent persecution during the Iranian Revolution. The story vascillates between the domestic struggles of the family members remaining in Iran and the immigrant experience of the family’s son studying in New York. Sofer raises numerous universal questions: Do we flee or fight when faced with adversity? How do we adapt to foreign surroundings? How does a family stay together?”
For more info, go here.
This article appears in February 13 • 2009.
