Pulitzer Prize winner Hernan Diaz for Ply

Hernan Diaz is coming to The Bookshop on Friday 23 October, where he'll be presenting his new novel, Ply. It's an evening with the author himself, so if you've been following his work, this is your chance to hear him talk through the book in person.

Ply is a literary speculative novel that looks at the place of technology in the American imagination. It follows an orphan who becomes a 'pincher' — someone who steals electricity from the grid to sell it on the black market — and gets drawn into a rich art and music scene and a paranoid maze that leads to a scientific experiment that could change the fabric of reality itself. It's a long way from the historical and financial worlds of his previous work, so it'll be interesting to hear him explain the shift.

If you're not yet familiar with his name, Diaz is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Trust, which won the Pulitzer Prize, was longlisted for the Booker Prize and named one of The New York Times' 100 Best Books of the Century. His first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He's also picked up the John Updike Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Kirkus Award, a Whiting Award and the William Saroyan International Prize, and was a fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages, so he's well-travelled by the time he reaches York.

The evening runs from 8:00 to 9:00 PM, with doors opening at 7:00 PM, so there's plenty of time to get settled before he starts. You'll find The Bookshop at 1 Museum Street, York YO1 7DT.