Harvard Book Store Presents:

Emily St. John Mandel

presenting

Sea of Tranquility:
A Novel

Harvard Book Store welcomes beloved, bestselling novelist EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL—author of Station Eleven—for a discussion of her latest, highly anticipated novel, Sea of Tranquility.

A Return to In-Person Events

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

• Face coverings are required of all staff and attendees when inside the venue. Masks must snugly cover nose and mouth. At venues where refreshments are served, attendees may briefly unmask when actively eating or drinking.
• Proof of vaccination is required for entry into the venue. No exceptions. (Harvard Book Store staff will be checking vaccine cards and/or vaccine passports at the door.)
• Attendance is capped so as to allow for some social distancing in the venue.

For the time being, we will not be holding author signings at these events, in order to limit close contact. When possible, we will have a pre-signed books available for purchase on-site.

Ticketing

There are two ticket options available for this event.

Book-Included Ticket: Includes admission for one and one copy of Sea of Tranquility.

Admission-Only Ticket: Includes admission for one.

About Sea of Tranquility

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.

Praise for Sea of Tranquility

“I could write a thousand words about Emily St. John Mandel, and this book, and this moment but I won’t dare spoil it. Truly soul-affirming.” —Emma Straub, bestselling author of All Adults Here

“A spiraling, transportive triumph of storytelling—sci-fi with soul.” —Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies 

“In Mandel’s stunning latest, people find themselves inhabiting different places and times, from early 20th-century Canada to a 23rd-century moon colony . . . The novel’s narratives crystallize flawlessly. Brilliantly combining imagery from science fiction and the current pandemic, Mandel grounds her rich metaphysical speculation in small, beautifully observed human moments. By turns playful, tragic, and tender, this should not be missed.” —Publishers Weekly, starred

Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel’s novels include The Glass Hotel, which was selected by President Barack Obama as one of his favourite books of 2020, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and has been translated into 21 languages, and Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award among other honours, has been translated into 33 languages, and will soon be a limited series on HBO Max. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

Photo Credit: Sarah Shatz