Shyam Selvadurai

A program for adults, Wednesday May 8, 7:30 pm-9:00 pm, Free
Alice MacKay Room, Lower Level

Join us for an evening with three award-winning authors. Colin McAdam reads from A Beautiful Truth, paulo de costa reads from The Green and Purple Skin of the World and Shyam Selvadurai reads from his latest, The Hungry Ghosts.

Told simultaneously from the perspectives of humans and chimpanzees, Colin McAdams A Beautiful Truth reveals the lure of belonging and the capacity for survival. A heartfelt story about parenthood and friendship, and about the things we hold sacred as humans and the facts that link us to nature.

Shyam Selvadurais The Hungry Ghosts is a beautifully written, dazzling story of family, wealth and the long reach of the past. It shows how racial, political and sexual differences can tear apart both a country and the human heart not just once, but many times, until the ghosts are fed and freed.

paulo da costas The Green and Purple Skin of the World gets under your skin, bruises your consciousness with its exploration of the forces that hold us together, not always benignly, and those that pull us apart. de costas stories dazzle and beguile with their craft, their often dark humour, and their grasp of people living the extremity that is daily life.
For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603
Sponsored by Vancouver Writers Fest
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/ (starfishian)… (more)

Three powerful narratives examine family ties and the ongoing search for home and belonging.

Paris, 1878. Set at a moment of profound artistic, cultural and societal change, Cathy Marie Buchanan’s acclaimed novel, The Painted Girls, is a tale of two remarkable sisters rendered uniquely vulnerable to the darker impulses of “civilized society.”

Orphaned as teenagers, Beena and Sadhana have grown up under the exasperated watch of their Sikh uncle, who runs a bagel shop in Montreal's Hasidic community of Mile End. In Bone and Bread, Saleema Nawaz introduces us to an adult Beena grappling with a fresh grief: Sadhana has died suddenly and strangely, her body lying undiscovered for a week before anyone realizes what has happened.

In Buddhist myth, the dead may be reborn as "hungry ghosts"—spirits with stomach so large they can never be full—if they have desired too much during their lives. The Hungry Ghosts, Shyam Selvadurai’s sweeping new novel, explores how racial, political and sexual differences can tear apart both a country and the human heart—not just once, but many times, until the ghosts are fed and freed. (thebookpile)… (more)