Elliot Ackerman at Harvard Book Store

Presenting

Halcyon: A Novel

in conversation with DREW GILPIPN FAUST

Harvard Book Store welcomes ELLIOT ACKERMAN—a former White House Fellow, Marine, and author of Dark at the Crossing and Green on Blue—for a discussion of his latest novel Halcyon. He will be joined in conversation by DREW GILPIN FAUST—former president of Harvard University and author of This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.

A Return to In-Person Events

Harvard Book Store is excited to be back to in-person programming. To ensure the safety and comfort of everyone in attendance, the following Covid-19 safety protocols will be in place at all of our Harvard Book Store events until further notice:

• Face coverings are required of all staff and attendees when inside the store. Masks must snugly cover nose and mouth.

About Halcyon

Virginia, 2004. Gore is entering his second term as president. Our narrator, Martin Neumann, recently divorced, is living at Halcyon, the estate of renowned lawyer and World War II hero Robert Ableson. When news breaks that scientists funded by the Gore administration have discovered a cure for death, it calls into question everything Martin thought he understood about life, not least his work as a historian. Who is Ableson, really, and why did he draw Martin into his orbit? Is this new science a miraculous good or an insidious evil?

Stretching from pivotal elections to intimate family secrets, from the Battle of Saipan to the toppling of Confederate monuments, Halcyon is a profound and probing novel that grapples with what history means, who is affected by it, and how the complexities of our shared future rest on the dual foundations of remembering and forgetting.

Praise for Halcyon

“Thought-provoking . . . Visionary.” —Publishers Weekly

“A novel of ideas in an age of opinions.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A thoughtful and fascinating thought experiment, one that explores mortality, fate, and the malleability of historical memory.” —Booklist