eLearning Collaborative

Writers & Books’ “If All of Rochester Read the Same Book” , initiative connects people to the experience of literature and to others throughout our community, through reading and discussion. For four months each year, beginning in January, the entire Rochester community will be turned into one giant book club, as Writers & Books once again presents “If All of Rochester Read the Same Book…

Writers & Books is proud to announce that the novel Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami has been selected for the 2008 “If All of Rochester Read the Same Book…” community-wide reading program.

Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is about four Moroccans who cross the Straits of Gibraltar on a lifeboat in order to immigrate to Spain. Why are they risking their lives? And are the rewards worth it? The answers unfold in a series of linked narratives, dealing with key events in each character’s past and how their lives are changed forever—for better or for worse—by their decision.

Comments about and reviews of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits “Laila writes in a style both pragmatic and poetic; with romance and the human condition coiled together. An excellent book.”

Whitney Otto, author of How to Make an American Quilt. Lalami writes about her home country without the expatriate's self-indulgent and often condescending nostalgia. She brings a calm sympathy to all her characters... her evenhandedness offers us no scope for easy judgments."

Read Laila Lalami's blog

Monroe # 1 BOCES offers a live interactive program with the author on a day in March. Date and time are not available at this time. We typically place the author at a different site each year and two or three other sites can hear her presentation and ask questions.

Contact: Holly Sharp

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