News from New York State Writers Institute

For more information contact: Suzanne Lance, 518-442-5620

UAlbany Writer-in-Residence Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya to Read October 25, 2007

NYS Writers Institute Events Week of October 22 - 26, 2007

ALBANY, NY (10/10/2007; 1440)(readMedia)-- UALBANY WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE JOYDEEP ROY-BHATTACHARYA, AUTHOR OF PHILOSOPHICAL THRILLERS, TO DISCUSS NEW FICTION, OCTOBER 25, 2007

India-born novelist Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, UAlbany Writer-in-Residence and author of the philosophical thriller, “The Gabriel Club” (1998), will read from and discuss new work set in various parts of the Islamic world, on Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 4:15 p.m. in the Assembly Hall, Campus Center on the UAlbany uptown campus. The event is sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and UAlbany English Department, and is free and open to the public.

Roy-Bhattacharya will read from and discuss the opening sections of three works-in-progress: “The Desert of Love,” “City of Dreams,” and “A Small War” — all with a background in the Islamic world, chronicling Muslim culture and politics.

Born and educated in India, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya is the author of the first novel “The Gabriel Club” (1998), a philosophical murder mystery about the fate of a group of artists and political dissidents in Budapest, Hungary. The action unfolds during the Communist regime in the 1970s, and many years later, after Communism’s fall. The Budapest police are called in to investigate when a wax effigy of the club’s founder is discovered floating in the Danube River, nearly 20 years after her mysterious disappearance.

Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee called the “The Gabriel Club,” “An impressive debut, serious and passionate.” The reviewer for the London “Independent” called it “an impressive poetic thriller,” and said, “The central characters act just as you would expect from mittel-European intellectuals: they walk around naked, smoke like chimneys and spend aeons of time debating the meaning of existence.” The reviewer for “The Australian” remarked on the novel’s mix of genres, “moving from hard-boiled thriller to passages that read like homages to modernists such as Kafka and Joyce,” and called it an “intense depiction of the psychic effects of living under communism.” The book received the Grand Jury Prize at the Budapest Book Fair, and has been published in 11 languages.

In an interview with India’s leading English-language daily, “The Hindu,” the author responded to questions about why he chose to set “The Gabriel Club” outside his native India. Pointing out that Joseph Conrad never wrote about the country of his origin, he stated, “As a writer, I would like to write about the things I am passionate about. I feel very uncomfortable about including personal details. Memory, freedom and faith that transcend national boundaries are the central concerns of this book.”

The author is a faculty member of the Bard College Workshop in Language and Thinking, and presently serves as Writer-in-Residence in the UAlbany English Department.

For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

“SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE” TO BE SCREENED ON OCTOBER 26, 2007

“Spirit of the Beehive” (“El Espíritu de la Colmena,” Spain, 1973, 97 minutes, color, 35 mm, in Spanish with English subtitles, directed by Victor Erice) will be shown on Friday, October 26, 2007 at 7:30 p.m. in Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, on the University at Albany’s downtown campus. Sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute, the screening is free and open to the public.

After watching James Whale’s 1931 horror feature “Frankenstein,” screened by a travelling projectionist in a Spanish village during the early years of Franco’s regime, two small girls embark on a quest to find and befriend the monster. Recently rediscovered by American critics, “Spirit of the Beehive” has been called “a work of sheer, entrancing beauty” (“Chicago Tribune”), and “the finest and most beautifully wrought first film of the European 70s” (“Village Voice”). A new 2006 print will be shown.

For additional information contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

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