Fiction at Literati: Katie Kitamura with Natalie Bakopoulos

Monday, February 13, 2017 - 7:00pm

Literati is pleased to welcome Katie Kitamura in support of her most recent novel, A Separation, a staff favorite and a Literati Cultura selection. Katie will be joined in conversation by Natalie Bakopoulos, author of The Green Shore.

A young woman has agreed with her faithless husband: it’s time for them to separate. For the moment it’s a private matter, a secret between the two of them. As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to go look for him, still keeping their split to herself. In her heart, she’s not even sure if she wants to find him. As her search comes to a shocking breaking point, she discovers she understands less than she thought she did about her relationship and the man she used to love. 

A searing, suspenseful story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation lays bare the gult that divides us from the inner lives of others. With exquisitely cool precision, Katie Kitamura propels us into the experience of a woman on edge, with a fiercely mesmerizing story to tell.

“A slow burn of a novel that gathers its great force and intensity through careful observation and a refusal to accept old, shopworn narratives of love and loss.” —Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation

“A novel so seamless, that follows its path with such consequence, that even minor deviations seem loaded with meaning. Wonderful.” —Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle

“The burnt landscape, the disappearance of a man, the brilliantly cold, precise, and yet threatening, churning tone of the narrator—make A Separation an absolutely mesmerizing work of art.” —Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers

“Profound and gripping. I had that rare sense of feeling like I was in a creation specifically made out of words, that couldn’t have been made out of any other substance. Kitamura combines the calm complexity of Joseph Conrad with the pacing and reveal of Patricia Highsmith. This novel is a wonder and a pleasure.” —Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances and Little Labors

A Separation opens up fissures of ambiguity in emotional experiences too often misunderstood as monolithic—grief, desire, estrangement—and plumbs these crevices for all their complexities. It has both urgency and afterglow: I read it quickly, but didn’t stop thinking about it for a long time once I was done.” —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams

Katie Kitamura is a critic and novelist living in New York City. She is the author of Gone to the Forest and The Longshot, both of which were finalists for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. A recipient of a Lannan Residency Fellowship, Kitamura has written for The New York TimesThe GuardianGranta,BOMBTriple Canopy, and is a regular contributor to Frieze.

Event address: 
Literati Bookstore
124 E. Washington St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Books: 
A Separation: A Novel By Katie Kitamura Cover Image
$25.00
Email info@literatibookstore.com or call for price
ISBN: 9780399576102
Published: Riverhead Books - February 7th, 2017