✨✨✨Cover Reveal! Here’s the paperback cover for The Dream Hotel, coming out June 30 with @ireadvintage . If you’ve been waiting to read it, talk about it with your book group, or add it to your syllabus, now’s your chance! And as always, don’t forget you can get a copy for free from your local library. Happy reading! 📚❤️🪬
Back from a wonderful trip to Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, in support of the Australian edition of The Dream Hotel. It was my first time in the southern hemisphere, and I enjoyed every moment of it. Koalas! White ibises! Black swans! But also so much interesting art and history, including the history of the First Fleet, Bennelong, and Pemulwuy. And after years of teaching Peter Carey’s Kelly Gang novel, I finally got to see the famous Sidney Nolan paintings, Ned Kelly’s armor, and the (horrifying) Melbourne Gaol, an eerie place to visit after writing TDH. Thank you to Neha Kale, who moderated my event at @sydneyoperahouse ; Sonia Nair, who was in conversation with me at the @wheelercentre ; and Jennifer Mills, who stepped in to do an event @goodwoodbooks following the cancellation of the AWF. 📚❤️🪬
So the American president who came back to power pledging he would bring peace has once again started a war, this time allying himself with the genocidaire leader who turned Gaza into rubble. This latest aggression is unlikely to result in what the war leaders claim, for the simple reason that freedom requires the patient building of democratic institutions, not the bombing of girls’ schools in airstrikes or the arming of local militias. But what this war is almost sure to do is further escalate tensions in an already fragile region, contribute to the ongoing decline of the U.S., and result in the killing of many innocents. If only we had an opposition party willing to offer a clear and strong repudiation of this aggression, rather than just grumbling about process.
Ciao a tutti! The Italian edition of The Dream Hotel comes out in just two weeks with @tre60libri , in a translation by Maddalena Togliani. Sweet dreams! ❤️📚🪬
Last week at the Aero I had the good fortune to hear Wagner Moura, Gabriel Leone, Alice Carvalho, and Gabriel Domingues talking about their excellent film The Secret Agent, directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. The story is set in 1977 Brazil, but with its immigrants and refugees fleeing persecution, its corrupt and violent police, its scientists under fire, its billionaire bandits, and its complicit media, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was set in the U.S. And yet the most moving part of it was the joyful community at the center of the story, led by the incandescent Tania Maria.
Just to be clear: It is illegal to invade another nation, remove its leader, and without the consent or knowledge of the people, to appoint yourself custodian of their natural resources. It didn’t work 23 years ago, and it’s not going to work now. You don’t need a crystal ball to predict that the result of all this will be the enrichment of corporations, the increase of military budgets at the expense of social services, and as always the suffering of civilians.
