Even If Everything Ends: A Searing, Beautiful Novel on Life, Loss, and Today’s Climate Moment
Sunday, May 7 | 1:00 PM - 2:00 PMThe Marsh Berkeley - Cabaret
- Environment/Nature
- International
- Literary
Be one of the first readers in the U.S. to meet the author of a novel that’s sweeping the globe: Jens Liljestrand with his debut Even If Everything Ends, one the fiercest and most profoundly human of the climate novels we’ve ever read. Its U.S. publisher described why it joined 20 other countries in acquiring the book: “this is both a domestic family novel, rife with boorish teenagers, fussy newborns, marital strife, and infidelity, and a page-turning, eye-opening, and urgent novel about the climate crisis. It is not postapocalyptic. It is right now…” Liljestrand, an acclaimed Swedish journalist, doesn’t sugarcoat the situation in which his characters find themselves: a wildfire raging in the Swedish countryside. And yet: this unflinching book arrived in the Festival office with a letter from Liljestrand printed on paper embedded with wildflower seeds and bearing this instruction: “Plant into the soil and watch grow.” Out of fire comes new growth; amidst fear and loss, how do we live? This is a program, experience, and book not to be missed.
Liljestrand will be in conversation with John Freeman, one of our most prominent literary critics and an esteemed poet, editor, and author of many books, including the anthology Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World.
Book signing information: Marcus Books, at the venue
Sponsored by the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation