Fiction
Deborah Harkness
All Souls Trilogy: Shadow of Night
9:15pm | Saturday 15 September 2012Tickets: | Duration: | Venue: |
£N/A | 1 Hour | St Mary Magdalene Church |
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This was an Oxford Literary Festival 2012 Event.
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A candlelit church at the dead of night is the perfect venue for a spooky introduction to Professor Deborah Harkness’s All Souls Trilogy. Historian Harkness has flown over from the United States to be at the festival to talk about her trilogy, which follows the story of Diana Bishop, a historian and reluctant witch who falls in love with mysterious 1500-year-old vampire and genetecist Matthew Clairmont. The All Souls Trilogy began with A Discovery of Witches, which was a worldwide top-ten bestseller and is now being turned into a Hollywood movie. The second volume, Shadow of Night, which features an opening sequence in Elizabethan Woodstock, was published in July and debuted at number one on The New York Times bestseller list and number two on The Sunday Times bestseller list.
Harkness is a scholar and student of history. She is an expert in the history of magic, alchemy and science in Europe, especially between 1500 and 1700, and was a Fulbright Fellow in Oxford, rowed for Keble College, and has spent spells researching at the Bodleian Library and All Souls College library. She has written works of non-fiction, including the award-winning The Jewel House about the practice of Elizabethan science, before turning to her novels. Her career in fiction began when she says she began to wonder ‘if there really are vampires, what do they do for a living?’ Prepare to be spooked!