What: Critically acclaimed novelist Francisco Goldman, Allan K. Smith Professor of English Language and Literature at Trinity College, will discuss his first nonfiction book, The Art of Political Murder.  The book is a suspenseful chronicle and reconstruction of a crime and investigation in the tradition of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and Gabriel García Márquez’s News of a Kidnapping. 

The vicious bludgeoning of Bishop Juan Gerardi in his parish house garage in Guatemala City, was the start of one of the most sensational, controversial and momentous murder cases in contemporary Latin America. Was it a political assassination or a sordid domestic crime?  The case became a fight over the destiny of a country just emerging from decades of civil war, awash in corruption and violence. Was justice possible or was it just a quixotic dream? The book takes us deep inside a “broken” state—where military officers kill with impunity, the media is manipulated and corrupted, witnesses and judges are threatened and even assassinated, and justice seems unattainable. 

When: Jan. 24, 2008 ~ 4:15 p.m.

Where: Hamlin Hall on the Trinity College campus

Background:  FRANCISCO GOLDMAN is the author of three highly acclaimed novels, including The Long Night of White Chickens, which was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize for first fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The Ordinary Seaman, which was a finalist for the International IMPAC-Dublin Literary Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction.  Both novels were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award and have been translated into nine languages.  His other work is The Divine Husband. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a Fellow at the New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers. His fiction and journalism have appeared in, among other publications, The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Outside, and many other publications.  Goldman resides in New York City and Mexico City.

This event is free and open to the public.  There will be a reception and book signing to follow.  For more information, please contact the Trinity College English Department at (860) 297-2455.