Bondi Literary Salon April Book Club: Trust by Hernan Diaz

Join the Bondi Literary Salon for our April book club, hosted by Dave Francis! In our gathering, we will be discussing Hernan Diaz's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Trust.

WHEN: Tuesday, 9th April, 2024, at Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore, please arrive at 6.45pm for a prompt 7pm start.

TICKETS: Admission; $25.00 (excluding external fees). Your ticket includes a drink on arrival and nibbles during the evening.

2023 CO-WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE. LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE

A Most Anticipated Book of 2022 - Vulture, AV Club, Lithub, Oprah Daily, Goodreads

A literary puzzle about money, power, and intimacy, TRUST is a novel that challenges the myths shrouding wealth, and the fictions that often pass for history.

About Trust

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune?

This is the mystery at the centre of Bonds, a successful 1938 novel that all of New York seems to have read. But it isn't the only version of this story of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST brilliantly puts this narrative into conversation with other accounts and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation. Provocative and propulsive, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the reality-warping gravitational pull of capital and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.

About the Author

Hernán Diaz’s debut novel In the Distance was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award. It was also the winner of the Saroyan International Prize, the Cabell Award, the Prix Page America, and the New American Voices Award, among other distinctions. A recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award, Hernán is currently a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library. His work has been published in the New York Times, The Kenyon Review, Playboy, Granta, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He serves as associate director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University, where he edits the journal Revista Hispánica Moderna. Born in Argentina, Diaz was raised in Sweden and now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.

About the Host

Dave Francis has been a long-time Bondi Literary Salon fan, and avid reader from an early age thanks to both parents filling him with a love of words and stories. He has a degree in English Lit from Otago University which helped with his love of the classics and poetry, and has recently (re) dived into a Shakespeare rabbit hole. 

Some of Dave's favourite books include 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

About Bondi Literary Salon

Bondi Literary Salon was established in 2018, it is the in-house book club of beloved Bondi institution, Gertrude & Alice. The Bondi Literary Salon endeavours to explore the vast world of literature each month, with a selection that reflects a focus on diverse writers and stories; delving into both classic and contemporary fiction, as well as non-fiction. 

Our philosophy has always been to use language and literature not only as a tool for connection and community, but as an insight into worlds we have not had the pleasure of visiting ourselves. We welcome all - young and old, those with a life-long love of literature, or whose relationship may be only beginning. Join us in the unmatched comfort of an after-hours bookstore, accompanied by wine and cheese, for an evening spent discussing books and building community.

About Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore

Rated as one of the top 10 bookstores in the world by National Geographic, Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore is an oasis for writers, readers, and coffee lovers. Books overflow from the shelves of their store, featuring a mix of new, second-hand, antiquarian and rare books. Stay a while & enjoy some home made chai, and amazing coffee, and unearth a book treasure or two. Read more about the bookstore's story here, and about the real Gertrude & Alice here.