Events

For more than two hundred years after William Shakespeare's death, no one doubted that he had written his plays. Since then, however, dozens of candidates have been proposed for the authorship of what is generally agreed to be the finest body of work by a writer in the English language. In this remarkable book, Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays. Among the doubters have been such writers and thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, and Helen Keller. It is a fascinating story, replete with forgeries, deception, false claimants, ciphers and codes, conspiracy theories—and a stunning failure to grasp the power of the imagination.

As Contested Will makes clear, much more than proper attribution of Shakespeare's plays is at stake in this authorship controversy. Underlying the arguments over whether Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays are fundamental questions about literary genius, specifically about the relationship of life and art. Are the plays (and poems) of Shakespeare a sort of hidden autobiography? Do Hamlet, Macbeth, and the other great plays somehow reveal who wrote them?

Shapiro is the first Shakespeare scholar to examine the authorship controversy and its history in this way, explaining what it means, why it matters, and how it has persisted despite abundant evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays attributed to him. This is a brilliant historical investigation that will delight anyone interested in Shakespeare and the literary imagination.

Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk is one of the brightest new literary talents to emerge in East and Central Europe since the fall of communism. Novelist, essayist, playwright, and public intellectual, Stasiuk has carved out a place for himself as a highly original thinker and stylist, conveying the bittersweet realities of the "New Europe" with grace, irony, and insight. His work has been widely translated throughout Europe; four of his books have been made available in English, including Tales of Galicia, Nine and Fado (the last two translated by our collaborator Bill Johnston of Indiana University).

Andrzej Stasiuk will read from his work in Polish and in English translation, and will discuss his writing in the context of present-day Poland and Central and Eastern Europe. He will be accompanied by his partner, Monika Sznajderman, publisher of Wydanictwo Czarne, one of Poland's premier literary presses.

This event marks Andrzej Stasiuk's first appearance in the U.S.; from Bloomington he travels to New York to take part in the opening reading of the PEN World Voices Festival, alongside such writers as Salman Rushdie and Patti Smith.

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