Video / Audio  Colm Toibin

In two recent novels, Kamila Shamsie and Colm Tóibín recreate classical mythology to address contemporary audiences and transnational subjects. Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire brings the story of Antigone to the contemporary British Pakistani community, while Colm Tóibín's House of Names re-imagines the Agamemnon tragedy from the points of view of Clytemnestra and Electra. These two authors will join each other in conversation to discuss their modern adaptations of these Greek classics and to explore why these heroines continue to haunt writers and readers today. Chris Morash moderates the discussion.

Renowned author Colm Tóibín will be in conversation with Roy Foster, Professor of Irish History, about subjects addressed in their upcoming works, both set in Ireland. Colm Tóibín's new novel Nora Webster dramatises the life of a woman and her family in a small town in Ireland in the late 1960s.

Authors Colm Tóibín and Julie Orringer discussed the topic of “Family Novels" with Deborah Cohen, Professor of History at Northwestern.

Colm Tóibín is the author of many bestselling and critically acclaimed novels, including The Master (which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize) and Brooklyn; the short-story collection Mothers and Sons; and, most recently, both the novel and play The Testament of Mary (which will open on Broadway later this spring, starring Fiona Shaw). Julie Orringer is the author of the short-story collection How to Breathe Underwater, which won the Northern California Book Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a “Best Book” by the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. In 2011, she published her “expertly crafted” and “emotionally haunting” first novel, The Invisible Bridge. Together, they will discuss the topic of “Family Novels" with Deborah Cohen, Professor of History at Northwestern and author of the forthcoming historical study Family Secrets.