The 2021 AJC Decatur Book Festival Presented by Emory University, A Cappella Books, and the Atlanta Writer’s Club | Robert Olen Butler in conversation with Rosemary Magee - Late City

The 2021 AJC Decatur Book Festival Presented by Emory University, A Cappella Books, and the Atlanta Writer’s Club | Robert Olen Butler in conversation with Rosemary Magee - Late City

Saturday, Oct 02, 2021 4:30 PM

Location:
First Baptist Church of Decatur
308 Clairemont Ave
Decatur, Georgia 30030

In ”Late City,” a 115-year-old man lies on his deathbed as the 2016 election results arrive, and revisits his life in this moving story of love, fatherhood, and the American century from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler.

The 2021 AJC Decatur Book Festival, A Cappella Books, and the Atlanta Writer’s Club welcome the author to the First Baptist Church of Decatur. Butler will discuss his new novel with Rosemary Magee, Decatur Book Festival board member and Director Emerita of Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library.

Seating is general admission. To ensure the safety of our speaker and guests, proof of vaccination will be required to enter the venue. Masks are required.

A Cappella Books will have signed copies of the book available at our booth outside the venue. You may also pre-order a copy via the link below.

Register here to reserve your seat for the program:

About the Book

“Late City  is a visionary and poignant novel centered around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die, Late City covers much of the early twentieth century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam's life, from his childhood in the American South and his time in the French trenches during World War I to his fledgling newspaper career in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties and the decades that follow, snippets of history are brought sharply into focus. 

Sam grows up in Louisiana, with a harsh father, who he comes to resent both for his physical abuse and for what Sam eventually perceives as his flawed morality. Eager to escape and prove himself, Sam enlists in the army as a sniper while still underage. The hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, but, as he recounts these tales on his deathbed, we come to realize that it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the U.S., Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to all the major historical turns of the twentieth century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters Sam's at almost every turn. 

As he contemplates his relationships—with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son—Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years in this heart-rending novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner.

About the Author

Robert Olen Butler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of eighteen previous novels, including ”Hell,” “A Small Hotel,” and ”Perfume River.” He is also the author of six short story collections and a book on the creative process, ”From Where You Dream.” He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and received the 2013 F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.