Friday, March 13, 8pm
Books & Books, Coral Gables
Meet American film, theatre, television director and writer
JAN ELIASBERG
discussing
Hannah’s War: A Novel
Jan Eliasberg is taking her long-standing talent for portraying strong, independent female characters and for orchestrating rip-roaring, fast-paced drama and action on-screen and bringing it to the page in her debut novel HANNAH’S WAR. With this tale of an extraordinary heroine inspired by a real-life female physicist, Eliasberg has accomplished the rare feat of creating a riveting spy thriller that’s also an evocative and moving work of literary fiction.
Inspired by the life and genius of Jewish-Austrian physicist Lise Meitner, HANNAH’S WAR is Eliasberg’s nuanced answer to important questions about scientific discovery, patriotism, morality, love, and loyalty. In giving voice to Dr. Meitner’s experiences, Eliasberg wanted to correct the historical record and to enable her own daughter and her peers to see that “history is filled with remarkable women of towering achievement and of deep humanism; we need only look beyond the authorized texts to see them.”
As award-winning writer Charles Baxter put it, HANNAH’S WAR “moves forward with great speed and power, giving off both heat and light.” In her re-imagining of the race to build the atomic bomb, Eliasberg brings cinematic scope, unforgettable imagery, pitch-perfect dialogue, and rich, complex characters to a compelling story full of unexpected plot twists, set against the high-stakes historical backdrop of World War II. The result is a beautifully rendered, gripping novel that readers will want to devour in one sitting.
Jan Eliasberg is an award-winning writer/director. Her prolific directing career includes dramatic pilots for CBS, NBC, and ABC, such as Miami Vice and Wiseguy; countless episodes of television series, including Bull, Nashville, Par
Eliasberg also has a storied career as a screenwriter, writing films driven by strong female leads, including Fly Girls about the Women Air Service Pilots in WWII for Nicole Kidman and Cameron Diaz at FOX 2000, among many others.