Northshire Bookstore: Stephen O'Connor - We Want So Much to Be Ourselves - with Rebecca Makkai

This is an in person event at our Manchester, VT store! Acclaimed author Stephen O'Connor will discuss his new historical novel, a heartrending story of love in a time of hatred and rising fascism, with fellow novelist Rebecca Makkai. G nter Zeitz, psychoanalyst-in-training and the son of a Catholic country doctor, and Josine Rosen, Sigmund Freud's patient and the daughter of a Jewish shipping magnate, first meet in 1924, in Freud's Viennese waiting room. As their intense affair develops, Freud arranges for G nter's appointment to the newly created Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Shortly after the move, their daughter Hannah is born. But less than a decade later, all their hopes and ideals are profoundly challenged by political realities so horrific that they are, initially, beyond comprehension. A heartrending story of love in a time of hatred, an absorbing investigation into the Nazis' exploitation of psychoanalysis, and a cautionary tale about self-deception and the failures of a people to recognize the lies of their charismatic leader, We Want So Much to Be Ourselves examines the ways science can be corrupted and one's very identity transformed by historical circumstance. We Want So Much to Be Ourselves is a vivid, sorrowing novel about the power of ideas. As Nazi ideology rises, the story conveys the compromises and sacrifices of a decent man faced with the impossible. It does what Stephen O'Connor has long done in his work--trace the interior path of moral trouble, with all its inherent suspense. A really superb book. --Joan Silber, author of Improvement and Mercy STEPHEN O'CONNOR is the author of seven books including two novels, Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings and We Want So Much to Be Ourselves, and the short story collection Here Comes Another Lesson. His fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and Best American Short Stories, among other publications, and his nonfiction has been published in the New York Times, Nation, Boston Globe, and elsewhere. He teaches fiction and nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Manhattan. REBECCA MAKKAI's last novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the Clark Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and it was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times. Her other books are the novels The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime--four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca is on the MFA faculties of the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and Northwestern University, and is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. If you have questions about this or any other Northshire event, please write us at events@northshire.com.