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Seminar: Nicholas Birns, Fortunes of War: Olivia Manning in the Wartime Balkans and Middle East (April 17 session) - Fully Registered

Tuesday, April 17, 2018 - 11:00 AM | For members only | Whitridge Room | $60 for all four sessions, or $15 per session | advance registration required

Olivia Manning (1908-1980) was a British novelist, poet, writer and reviewer. Her fiction and nonfiction, frequently detailing journeys and personal odysseys, were principally set in England, Ireland, Europe and the Middle East. Her books are widely admired for her artistic eye and vivid descriptions of place.

Manning’s two major trilogies constitute one of the major achievements of British fiction in the twentieth century. Young married couple Harriet and Guy Pringle travel through the exotic locales of the Balkans and the Near East during wartime. As they traverse Bucharest, Athens, and Cairo against the backdrop of progressively more ominous battlefield developments, they encounter ideological divides and the chaos and flux of changing times, even while they mature through helping others. Olivia Manning’s style—lively and managing to be both naturalist and modernist—conjures an intriguing and atmospheric view of a desperate and consequential era.

This seminar takes place over four Tuesdays:
February 27: The Balkan Trilogy
March 27: The Balkan Trilogy
April 17: The Levant Trilogy
May 29: The Levant Trilogy

Reading assignments cover Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy:
The Great Fortune (1960)
The Spoilt City (1962)
Friends and Heroes (1965)

and Levant Trilogy:
The Danger Tree (1977)
The Battle Lost and Won (1978) 
The Sum of All Things (1980)

Books are available for registrants to purchase.


To register, contact the Events Office at events@nysoclib.org or 212.288.6900 x230, or click below to register online.