The importance of historical knowledge, collective memory, and public access to information are all prevalent themes in Daniel Alarcón’s debut novel, Lost City Radio. Meet Alarcón, discuss the book, and enjoy free refreshments at the Poway Library, 13137 Poway Rd, on July 19 at 6 p.m. The title is part of San Diego County Library’s California Reads program, a series of grant-funded events designed to animate public conversation on the nature and needs of democracy.
Alarcón was born in Lima, Peru in 1977. At the age of three, he and his family moved to a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, where he grew up and attended high school. He currently resides in Oakland, California. Lost City Radio explores the aftermath of a traumatic civil war in a fictitious South American country. Lost City Radio has been translated into several languages and was the winner of the 2008 PEN USA Novel Award and the 2009 International Literature Prize given by The House of World Culture in Berlin. The San Francisco Chronicle, Financial Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune named it a 2007 Best Book of the Year.
“The promise of great literature is that you can, by reading, enter the worldview or consciousness of another person, someone who may be nothing like you, and in the process broaden your own vision of the world,” said Alarcón in a Cal Humanities interview.