When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Harvard Book Store is tickled to welcome DAVID SEDARIS for a presentation of his newest collection of essays, When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Normally we would hold this event in a larger venue, but due to Mr. Sedaris's contractual obligations, we'll be hosting him in the store.

"David Sedaris's ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art," (The Christian Science Monitor) is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this new book.

Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina.

In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life—having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds—to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing.