We are delighted to return to one of the city’s most enticing public spaces, the Fireside Room of Hotel Sorrento. This evening is occasioned by the special visit of prize-winning French novelist Nicolas Mathieu. He is here with the English translation of his Prix Goncourt-winning novel, And Their Children After Them (Other Press, translated by William Rodarmor). Published originally as Leurs enfants après eux, this is a unique, brilliant coming-of-age tale.

“Mathieu’s stunning, bittersweet Prix Goncourt–winning English debut…will enrapture readers and appeal to fans of Édouard Louis.” —Publishers Weekly.

“Mathieu captures the vulnerability and awkwardness of adolescence with painful acuity…A gritty, expansive coming-of-age novel filled with sex and violence that manages to be tender, even wryly hopeful.” —Kirkus Reviews.

“As anguished as it is elegiac, as universal as it is grounded in the vivid particularities of its setting—1990s Rust Belt France—And Their Children After Them evokes the beautiful, miserable, longing-plagued experience of being an adolescent as pointedly and powerfully as any novel published since The Virgin Suicides.” —Adam Levin.

Co-presented with the Fireside Room/Hotel Sorrento, Alliance Française de Seattle, (www.afseattle.org) and Elliott Bay Book Company. Free admission.