Rebecca Solnit at Woodward's Garden for dinner and a reading from Faraway Nearby, Tuesday, September 17, 6pm 

($55 per person, 3-courses + passed noshes with a glass of Prosecco)

We are thrilled that Rebecca Solnit has said yes to a night at the Garden to read from her new Faraway Nearby. The snap above is from the dinner she did with us two years ago for Infinite City, which was gorgeous.

Faraway Nearby is a memoir of sorts, yet in true Solnit fashion, is really about many things. It is tangential, layered, lyric, a story about story itself.

Here are some lines I've tweeted from it recently:

Stories are compasses and architecture, we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them

...distant places give us refuge in territories where our own histories aren't so deeply entrenched and we can imagine other stories, other selves

And here's what some brill people say about it: 

Solnit opens a door into a maze of stories within stories, a dreamlike memoir composed of fairy tales, literary criticism, history, philosophy...  — Meehan Crist | Bookforum

Faraway Nearby is a finely-wrought, intense and eloquent manifesto... — Marina Warner | The Guardian

Solnit finds herself in similar territory to (WG Sebald's) discursive, wandering erudition. In what other stylistic context could Wile E. Coyote and the Tang dynasty artist Wu Daozi appear on the same page?  — David Anderson | Granta

Along with Sebald, Solnit has been likened to such luminous writers as Annie Dillard and Susan Sontag. She is one of our very best. Her Faraway Nearby is shimmering. We are lucky, lucky, lucky.

At Woodward's Garden, September 17, 6pm, $55 per person, 3-courses (does not include wine, tax or tip). Reserve through Open Table or call us at (415) 621-7122.

Menu to come. We're thinking something lamby & something apricot. Veg options, too. 

Faraway Nearby will be for sale at the dinner. Solnit will sign books, too.