Midnight in Berlin - Author Talk with James MacManus - 4/22

University Club Foundation, English-Speaking Union Host Talk & Dinner 

British author James MacManus, Managing director of The Times Literary Supplement, will discuss and sign his latest historic novel, Midnight in Berlin (Thomas Dunne Books - April 19, 2016) on Friday, April 22 at the National Register-listed University Club of Albany at 141 Washington Avenue.

James MacManus’ other novels include The Language of the Sea, Black Venus and Sleep in Peace Tonight. In 2006, his film script about the life of British journalist George Hogg, based on his novel Ocean Devil, became a major motion picture titled The Children of Huang Shi starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers. For more information, please visit www.jamesmacmanus.com.

A meet the author reception with light fare and cash bar will begin at 5:30 p.m. with dinner at 6:00 and the program commencing at 7:00. The cost for the reception and dinner is $30, or simply attend the talk at 7:00 p.m. A book signing will follow the program, and books will be available for $24 courtesy of The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza. Reservations are required and may be made by calling the Club at 518-414-3555; by sending an email to ellen@universityclubalbany.com; or online with a credit card or PayPal. The event is sponsored by the University Club Foundation and one need not be a member of the University Club to attend.

Midnight In Berlin is set in Germany in the spring of 1939. Hitler is preparing for war. Colonel Noel Macrae, a British diplomat, plans the ultimate sacrifice to stop him. The West’s appeasement policies have failed. There is only one alternative: assassination. The Gestapo, aware of Macrae’s hostility, seeks to compromise him in their infamous brothel. There Macrae meets and falls in love with Sara, a Jewish woman blackmailed into becoming a Nazi courtesan.

Macrae finds himself trapped between the blind policies of this government and the dark world of betrayal and deception in Berlin. As he seeks to save the woman he loves from the brutality of the Gestapo, he defies his government and plans direct action to avert what he knows will be a global war.  Inspired by true events, Midnight In Berlin is a love story set against a world on the brink of war.

The event is co-hosted by the Albany branch of the English-Speaking Union of the United States, a non-profit, non-political membership organization whose mission is to promote scholarship and the advancement of knowledge through the effective use of English in an expanding global community. It sponsors and organizes educational and cultural programs for students and teachers and provides lectures, social events, and travel opportunities for its members. The Albany Branch is one of 68 located throughout the United States and is part of a global network of ESUs in over 50 countries around the world. Visit www.esuus.org for more information.

The University Club of Albany Foundation is a 501c3 corporation formed in 2009 to recognize and maintain the unique historic and architectural significance of the National Register-listed University Club building, its historic neighborhood and the city of Albany, where it has been located since its inception in 1901. Support for educational programming at the University Club is provided by AT&T.

For more information about the University Club, visit www.universityclubalbany.com.