Behind the Curtain: Deception, Desire, and Creative Compulsion
2:45 PM - 3:30 PM
Sunday, November 9
Capitol Extension Room: E2.010 (1100 Congress Ave., Austin, TX 78701)
In these darkly comic, emotionally charged novels, two acclaimed authors explore the fictions we tell ourselves and each other in pursuit of love, legacy, and creative truth. In The True True Story of Raja the Gullible, Rabih Alameddine introduces a philosophy teacher in Beirut whose writing retreat abroad forces him to confront long-buried heartbreak, national trauma, and his obsessive, boundary-breaking bond with his mother. In Remember This, Anthony Giardina traces the unraveling of a playwright, his biographer daughter, and the secrets they keep as ambition, art, and desire collide across New York and post-earthquake Haiti. Both books pull back the curtain on memory, self-mythology, and the cost of creating art, family and the self.
- Books: Remember This, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
- Book Type: Fiction
- Authors: Anthony Giardina, Rabih Alameddine
- Moderator: Elizabeth McCracken
- Book Signing: 3:45 PM at The Main Book Signing Tent