*Please note: this event will take place live on Zoom, hosted by Europa Editions. RSVP here to save your spot!

This July 9, celebrate the North American release of Shadowplay, the “magnificent” new novel (Financial Times) by Joseph O’Connor, the best-selling author of The Star of the Sea. The author will be in conversation with National Book Award-winning writer Colum McCann (Apeirogon; Let the Great World Spin). Hosted by Europa Editions in partnership with Brookline Booksmith (Brooklin, MA), Mac's Backs (Cleveland, OH), McNally Jackson Books (New York, NY), Seminary Co-op (Chicago, IL), and Skylight Books.

"Joseph O'Connor's magnificent novel does event more than fly, it soars."—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

WINNER of the “Novel of the Year” prize at the 2019 An Irish Post Book Awards, Shadowplay is set during the golden age of West End theater in a London shaken by the crimes of Jack the Ripper. The novel follows Bram Stoker’s extraordinary experiences as the manager of the Lyceum Theatre and his friendship with theater impresario Henry Irving and acress Ellen Terry.

Stoker’s early morning walks on the streets of a London terrorized by a serial killer, his long, tempestuous relationship with Irving, and the closeness he finds with Terry, inspire him to write Dracula, the most iconic and best-selling supernatural tale ever published.

Praise for Shadowplay:

“Funny, smart, tender, wise.”—Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon

“I am a huge fan [of Shadowplay]...It’s rich, dense and beautifully written.”—Brendan Coyle, star of Downton Abbey, in The Chicago Tribune

“Effervescent...Subtly drawn and intensely affecting, this portrayal of accidental friendship, enduring love, frustrated ambition and, dare we say it, the alchemy of acting, recalls, in its effortless grace, those 19th-century novels that made readers of us all.”—Anna Mundow, The Wall Street Journal

“A vibrantly imaginative narrative of passion, intrigue and literary ambition.”—Miranda Seymour, The New York Times Book Review