Year of Wonders Book Talk with Australian Author Geraldine Brooks

“Above all, plague stories remind us that we cannot manage without community. Geraldine Brooks’s 2001 novel, “Year of Wonders,” is a testament to that very notion.” – Washington Post, March 2020

 

Join us for the AAA’s first virtual book club discussing bestselling novel Year of Wonders by Pulitzer Prize-winning Australian author Geraldine Brooks AO. Geraldine Brooks will be live in conversation with program host, distinguished Australian business leader Graham Bradley AM.

 

This event will feature an interactive chat for attendees to share their thoughts and ideas during the session as well as a Q&A with Geraldine Brooks.  Please submit your questions in advance to [email protected]

 

USA: Wednesday, July 22, 7pm EST / 4pm PST
AUS: Thursday, July 23, 7am AWST / 9am AEST

 

Complimentary to attend, registration essential

 

About the Author

Geraldine Brooks AO was born and raised in Sydney.  She attended the University of Sydney and worked at the Sydney Morning Herald.  She was awarded the Greg Shackleton Memorial Scholarship for graduate study at Columbia University where she obtained a masters degree in journalism.  She was a prize-winning  foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal for more than a decade, covering crises in the mideast, Africa and the Balkans.  She is the author of five best-selling novels including March, for which she won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and three works of non fiction, including The Idea of Home, based on her 2011 Boyer lectures.  She has been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a Radcliffe Fellow and will be a visiting lecturer at Harvard University in 2021.  Year of Wonders, published in 2001, was her first novel.

 

About the Moderator

Graham Bradley AM is a professional company director and is currently Non-Executive Chairman of HSBC Bank Australia, EnergyAustralia Holdings and United Malt. He is a director of Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited and Chairman of Infrastructure NSW.  He is a director of Tennis Australia and chairs Virgin Australia International Holdings and Ensemble Theatre Limited.

 

Graham was made a member of the Order of Australia in 2009 in recognition of his contribution to business, medical research and the arts.  He was Australian Institute of Company Directors Distinguished Fellow for 2012.

 

Graham was Managing Director of Perpetual Limited from 1995–2003.  Prior to joining Perpetual, Graham was National Managing Partner of national law firm, Blake Dawson (now Ashurst).  Before this, Graham was a partner of McKinsey & Company.

 

Graham was President of the Business Council of Australia from 2009–2011 and Deputy President of the Takeovers Panel.  Graham also devotes time to a range of non-profit organisations, including the State Library of NSW Foundation and the Ensemble Theatre.

 

About the Book

When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna’s eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a “year of wonders.”

 

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. Written with stunning emotional intelligence and introducing “an inspiring heroine” (The Wall Street Journal), Brooks blends love and learning, loss and renewal into a spellbinding and unforgettable read.

 

Read the book prior to the talk:

Order from Dymocks in Australia.

Order from Bookshop in the United States.

 

Geraldine Brooks Photography Credit: Randi Baird