Sing to Me

Author and translator Jesse Browner discusses his new novel, showcasing the most storied war in history through the perspective of a young boy, Hani. In conversation with Mark Polizzotti, followed by a signing.

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After the fall of Troy, an eleven-year-old boy sets off for the razed city when his father and sister vanish into the war zone; this "gorgeously drawn" novel offers an intimate vision of the most storied war in history, as seen through the eyes of a child. (Laird Hunt)

His family farm and the surrounding community now emptied by war, young Hani embarks on an epic quest – assisted by a brooding yet brilliant donkey – to find his lost sister in the ruins of Troy. Some war stories transcend time and circumstance, and so it is with the resourceful and heartbroken Hani, who must employ every bit of intelligence, every scrap of ingenuity, and ultimately every ounce of his spirit and humor to withstand the forces of civilization’s collapse.

Hani is no ordinary boy, however, and a character unlike any you’ve ever met. His interior world is one of startling depth and complexity. His insights into life, lives, and history are breathtakingly fresh. And his hope for survival–not a given, and in fact, less than likely–will propel you to the startling conclusion of this brief, elegiac, and singular work.

Jesse Browner is the author of the novels The Uncertain Hour and Everything Happens Today, among others, as well as of the memoir How Did I Get Here? He is also the translator of works by Jean Cocteau, Paul Eluard, Rainer Maria Rilke, Matthieu Ricard and other French literary masters. He lives in New York City.

Mark Polizzotti has translated more than sixty books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Arthur Rimbaud, Scholastique Mukasonga, Patrick Modiano, Marguerite Duras, and André Breton. His translations have won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and the Scott Moncrieff Prize and been shortlisted for the National Book Award, the International Booker Prize, the NBCC/Gregg Barrios Prize, and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. Polizzotti is the author of twelve books, including Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton, Highway 61 Revisited, Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto, and Why Surrealism Matters. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, Apollo, ARTnews, The Nation, Parnassus, Bookforum, and elsewhere. He lives in New York, where he directs the publications program at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.