- This event has passed.
Giacomo Sartori: I Am God
October 12, 2019 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm PDT
Free
Italian writer Giacomo Sartori discusses his new novel, I Am God.
Praise for I Am God
“Who better to reflect on the state of the planet than its creator? I Am God is by turns funny, sad, outrageous, and tender—a cosmic romp.”— Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction
“I am God is like a mirthful dream made real by the ingenuity of Sartori’s prose and Randall’s splendidly pointed and sly translation.”— Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen
“A playful, exciting, mockingly modern voice, translated, what’s more, by one of the few translators who can really make the Italian vernacular sing truly and fluently in English.”— Tim Parks, author of Italian Ways and Italian Neighbors
About I Am God
Diabolically funny and subversively philosophical, Italian novelist Giacomo Sartori’s I am God is the diary of the Almighty’s existential crisis that ensues when he falls in love with a human.
I am God. Have been forever, will be forever. Forever, mind you, with the razor-sharp glint of a diamond, and without any counterpart in the languages of men. So begins God’s diary of the existential crisis that ensues when, inexplicably, he falls in love with a human. And not just any human, but a geneticist and fanatical atheist who’s certain she can improve upon the magnificent creation she doesn’t even give him the credit for. It’s frustrating, for a god.
God has infinitely bigger things to occupy his celestial attentions. Yet he can’t tear his eyes (so to speak) from the geneticist who’s unsettlingly avid when it comes to science, sex, and Sicilian cannoli. Whatever happens, he must safeguard his transcendental dignity. So he watches—disinterestedly, of course—as the handsome climatologist who has his sights set on her keeps having strange accidents. And as the lanky geneticist becomes hell-bent on infiltrating the Vatican’s secret files, for reasons of her own….
A sly critique of the hypocrisy and hubris that underlie faith in religion, science, and macho careerism, I Am God takes us on a hilarious and provocative romp through the Big Questions with the universe’s supreme storyteller.