YPA Book Talk: Xita Rubert and Álvaro Enrigue

Join Young Professionals of the Americas for a book talk with Xita Rubert, author of the newly translated novel, The Key Biscayne Affair, winner of Spain's Herralde Prize. Rubert will be in conversation with Álvaro Enrigue, author of Now I Surrender and You Dreamed of Empires.  

After a conversation and Q&A, attendees will be invited to a drinks reception.

Bios

Xita Rubert is a Spanish novelist. She is the author of The Key Biscayne Affair, which received the prestigious Herralde Novel Prize, making her the youngest winner in the prize’s history. My Days with the Kopps, her debut novel, was translated into several languages. She holds a PhD from Princeton University and writes a column for the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. She is based in New York City.

Álvaro Enrigue is a Mexican writer whose most recent novel is You Dreamed of Empires, which was a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year. A former Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center and at Princeton University’s Program in Latin American Studies, he has taught at New York University, Princeton University, the University of Maryland, Columbia University, and Hofstra University. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The London Review of Books, and El País, among other publications. He lives in New York City.

About The Key Biscayne Affair

An eccentric Spanish philosophy professor relocates with his two children, a boy and a girl, from Boston to a gated island off the coast of Miami. The kids have come to the US to learn English and spend time with their father after a heated custody battle. But as the professor is embraced by a glittering social scene and his seemingly fun, innocent antics tip into recklessness, the children receive a very different kind of education.

In this lush, sharply observed novel, an unnamed, unreliable narrator remembers her surreal stay on Key Biscayne, where nobody lives unless they have something to hide. As the narrator is gradually drawn into the island’s morally ambiguous world, putting her innocence at risk, she begins to overidentify with her father. She becomes not just witness but also accomplice to his erratic behavior, acquiescing to his efforts to isolate herself and her brother from their concerned mother, whose calls from Spain go unanswered.

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