Launching - I Am No One - Patrick Flanery

An exciting book - An exciting Author

Launching

I Am No One explores the tenuous link between fear and paranoia in our post-Snowden lives;

a world of surveillance and self-censorship, where privacy no longer exists and our freedoms

are inexorably eroded.

Wednesday 11 May 2016 at 12 noon for 12h30

Buitenverwachting Restaurant

Guest Speaker; Patrick Flanery

Set in the post-Snowden era of creeping surveillance of ordinary citizens and everyday life,

I Am No One explores how a world without privacy is a world without freedom of expression.

Jeremy O'Keefe, a middle-aged Professor of History, returns to his native New York after a decade teaching at Oxford, hoping to reconnect with his daughter and rebuild the life he left behind. He settles into the rhythm of a too-empty life, long evenings alone after a day teaching students he barely knows. Then a strange encounter with a young man who presumes an acquaintance he doesn't remember and a series of disconcerting events leave him with a growing conviction that he is being watched. The pale young man keeps appearing, a haunting figure lingers outside his apartment at night, and then mysterious packages begin to arrive.

As his grip on reality seems to shift and turn, Jeremy struggles to know whether he can believe what he is experiencing or whether his mind is in the grip of an irrational obsession.

Guest Speaker Patrick Flanery

Patrick was born in California in 1975 and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. He studied Film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and earned a Ph.D. in Twentieth-Century English Literature at the University of Oxford. He contributes articles to a number of academic journals and he has written for Slightly Foxed, the Daily Telegraph and The Times Literary Supplement. He has published two novels to critical acclaim, Absolution in 2012 and Fallen Land in 2013. He lives in London.  He will be in Cape Town for a short time to launch his new novel I Am No One. 

The price per person for a delicious luncheon accompanied by elegant Buitenverwachting wines is R300 fully inclusive.

For more information or to book email sandybailey@telkomsa.net or telephone 021 685 8016 .

UK Reviews:

"Patrick Flanery’s topical, multi-layered novel probes the ubiquitous culture of surveillance today and its potential ramifications for a democratic society. .... A masterful plot, a terrifying subject, and a gripping read. .... It is clear where Flanery’s sympathies lie – in the words of one character: 'A country without privacy is a country without freedom.'"

— Lucy Popescu, The Independent on Sunday

“A passionate, gripping, brilliantly voiced and scintillatingly intelligent novel about that cancer afflicting modern democratic states -- the surveillance of its own people. ... I Am No One will get under your skin … and have you looking over your shoulder.”

 – Neel Mukherjee