News

I am kicking off the main portion of my book tour this weekend, with an event at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. The festival is a lot of fun; there are tons of readings, conversations, panel discussions, publisher booths, theatrical performances, good food, music, etc.

My event is on Saturday. Here are the details:

Saturday, April 25, 2009
12:30 PM
Fiction Panel: “The Writer’s Ear”
With Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Julia Leigh, Laila Lalami and moderated by Louisa Ermelino
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
Korn Convocation Hall
Los Angeles, California

Please note that the festival events require (free) tickets, which you can obtain at select Ticketmaster locations in Southern California. Don’t forget to wear sunscreen!

My friend Maud Newton asked me to write a short dispatch for her blog, about the process of writing about a male protagonist in Secret Son. You can also find out what music I was listening to while writing the novel; check out the playlist I did for the music and culture blog Largehearted Boy (run by David Gutowski). For those who are curious about how I came up with the title of the novel, here is a brief explanation at Bookbrowse. And lastly, here is an interview with Powells.com’s Dave Weich.

My first novel, Secret Son, is being released today. It should be at your local independent bookstore, chain bookstore, and of course it’s available online as well. In fact, readers who pre-ordered the book seem to have gotten it several days early (I’ve already heard from some of them!)

Here’s a little blurb about the novel:

For years, Youssef, a young man from a Casablanca slum, has heard his mother’s stories about his dead and respectably poor father, stories he used as inspiration for his own life. But when a religious group, known simply as The Party, moves into town, he discovers the truth—his father is a wealthy businessman and very much alive. Youssef sets out to find his real father and enters his Westernized world, setting off a chain of events with disastrous consequences. Secret Son, set in modern Morocco against a background of corrupt liberalism and Islamic fundamentalism, explores the struggle for identity and the myriad ways in which the political, the personal, and the religious bind us together.

If you live in any of the cities I’m visiting over the next three weeks, please come by and say hello. I’ll also be doing several radio interviews while on tour. (Tomorrow, for instance, I’ll be on Indiana’s WBOI tomorrow at 10.30 am EST/7.30 am PST, so please tune in.) I will try to post links to print reviews as time permits.

I am heading down to UC Irvine today for a panel discussion, though I’m running late because I just spent the last hour perusing the complete drafts of Madame Bovary, which the University of Rouen has put up online. The university’s researchers have been working on this site for quite some time. (See, for instance, this earlier post.) But this is the édition intégrale, which means that every single page of every single draft should be there. I revise obsessively, so Flaubert is a man after my own heart.

(via the indispensable Literary Saloon)

I am in Indianapolis today, to do an event for the Christamore House Guild. I think the event is already sold out, but just in case here is the information:

April 17, 2009
11 am – 3 pm
Christamore House Guild
Book & Author Luncheon
Indiana Roof Ballroom

Right now, I’m sitting in my hotel room, answering interview questions by email and waiting for my hosts to pick me up. More soon, I hope.