We celebrated a new edition of Shirley Hazzard’s classic literary masterpiece The Transit of Venus with an all-star panel of Hazzard fans. Award-winning and bestselling author Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies, Florida), who wrote the introduction to the new edition, moderated the panel. Groff led a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff (Cleopatra: A Life; The Witches: Salem, 1692), writer Lisa Brennan-Jobs (Small Fry: A Memoir), best-selling author Meg Wolitzer (The Interestings), National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee (Pachinko), and award-winning English writer Geoff Dyer (Out of Sheer Rage) on the lasting legacy of The Transit of Venus and Hazzard herself.
Featured Book
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The Transit of Venus
By Shirley Hazzard
Published by Penguin Classics
Considered “one of the great English-language novels of the twentieth century” (Paris Review), The Transit of Venus follows Caroline and Grace Bell as they leave Australia to begin a new life in post-war England. From Sydney to London, New York, and Stockholm, and from the 1950s to the 1980s, the two sisters experience seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal.
With exquisite, breathtaking prose, Australian novelist Shirley Hazzard tells the story of the displacements and absurdities of modern life. The result is at once an intricately plotted Greek tragedy, a sweeping family saga, and a desperate love story.