Credit: K. Browar

Simon Van Booy

Friday, July 15, 7:00 p.m.

Everything Beautiful Began After  BUY NOW

Simon Van Booy brings to the page his unique talent for poetic dialogue and sumptuous imagery in this, his remarkable debut novel of love and loss, dependence and independence. Rebecca has come to Athens to paint. Born and raised in the south of France, Rebecca's mother abandoned her and her sister when they were very young, left to be raised by her loving yet distant grandfather. Young and lost, she seeks solace in the heat of Athens. George has come to Athens to translate language. Dropped off at a New England boarding school when he was a child, he has close to no relationships with anyone, except the study of ancient language and alcohol. Henry has come to Athens to dig. An archaeologist, Henry is on-site at Athens during the day, and roams the Agora on the weekend. Three lost and lonely souls whose worlds become inexorable enmeshed with consequences that ripple far among the ruins of ancient Athens.

Simon Van Booy was born in London in 1975 and grew up in rural Wales and Oxford. After playing football in Kentucky, he lived in Paris and Athens. In 2002 he was awarded an MFA by Dartington College of Arts and won the H.R. Hays Poetry Prize. He has been awarded the 2009 Frank O'Connor Award for his collection Love Begins in Winter. He's also the author of The Secret Lives of People in Love. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his young daughter, where he teaches part-time at the School of Visual Arts and at Long Island University.

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