Join author Jake Lamar, in conversation with professor Marcus Bruce, to discuss Lamar’s celebrated noir novel, Viper’s Dream. The story of an aspiring jazz musician’s descent into the Harlem drug trade, Viper’s Dream redefines the crime genre, infusing it with tension and depth. Readers are swept into a hero’s journey, motivated by the central question: how much can one sacrifice to achieve one’s dreams? Hailed by Deborah Levy as “moody, poetic, and immersing,” the novel is a rich and atmospheric portrait of mid-century Manhattan’s dark underbelly. Lamar navigates murder, betrayal, romance, and jazz with skill, masterfully crafting a book both politically charged and poetically written.
About the speakers:
Jake Lamar is the award-winning author of a memoir, seven novels and a play. His most recent work, Viper’s Dream, is a crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961. Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, Jake Lamar has lived in Paris since 1993. He is a professor of creative writing at one of France’s top universities, Sciences Po.
Marcus Bruce is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies in the Religious Studies Department at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. He is also a founding member of the American Studies and Africana Programs at the college. He has published Henry Ossawa Tanner: A Spiritual Biography, a study of the first African American painter to achieve international recognition at the Paris Salon. He is currently writing a book entitled The Ambassadors: African Americans, Paris and A New Birth of Freedom, a study of African Americans at the Paris Exposition of 1900.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Lamar and Bruce will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
