Helprin to talk about new book at UMass Dartmouth

Mark Helprin, author of “Paris in the Present Tense,” will be the featured speaker Tuesday at The Boivin Center for French Language and Culture at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s first program of the fall semester.

Helprin is a best-selling New York Times novelist, short story writer, journalist and conservative commentator. He is married to Lynn Kennedy. He and his wife have two daughters and live on a farm in Virginia.

He was educated at Harvard University and at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He has also done post-graduate work at Princeton University, Magdalen College and the University of Oxford. His novels include: “Refiner’s Fire: The Life and Adventures of Marshall Pearl, a Foundling,” “Winter’s Tale,” “A Soldier of the Great War,” “Freddy and Fredericka” and “Sunlight and Shadow.”

Helprin’s latest book, “Paris in the Present Tense,” is set in present day Paris and depicts the life of 74- year-old Jules Lacour, a maître at Paris Sorbonne, a cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria and a child of the Holocaust.

In the twilight of his life, he struggles to find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present.

Helprin will be speaking Tuesday, Oct. 9 at 4 p.m. in the Grand Reading Room of the Claire T. Carney Library on the UMass Dartmouth campus.

A Q&A and book signing will follow the lecture. The program is free and open to the public. Parking is available on campus in lot 13.