Meet the author behind "Human Solutions"
By Midway Public Library
Human Solutions (Skyhorse Publishing, May 2014) is a chilling and accomplished debut about cults, crime, and the lengths we’ll go for love by novelist Avi Silberstein, inspired by the true story of Paul Schäfer, an ex-Nazi who founded the Colonia Dignidad in Chile in the late 1970s.
To most people, Javier Gonzalez is an ordinary man. If you were to ask him, he would tell you that he runs an acting studio in Santiago, Chile. However, only a handful of people know that Javier also runs an unusual sort of business. With the help of a team of actors, Javier engineers social situations that meet the unique needs of his clients. If you want your boss to like you, he can help; if you want the weatherman to fall in love with you, he can arrange it. He calls his business Human Solutions, and that is exactly what he provides.
And he is good. Javier is precise, observant and emotionally ruthless, and his manipulations never fail—until the day he slips up and a case leaves one of his clients tangled in a cult run by an ex-Nazi with torturous ties to the Pinochet dictatorship, a man with no conscience or fear—and Javier quickly realizes that he may have met his match.
Avi Silberstein was born in Chile in 1982. He moved to Canada in 2000. He is the Director of the Grand Forks & District Public Library. Human Solutions was featured on CBC’s All Points West Summer Reading List, quite a feat for a first time novelist.
The Kootenay Library Federation and participating libraries are sponsoring a Fall Kootenay/Boundary Tour. Avi Silbertein will be at the Midway Public Library September 19th, 2014. This is your chance to meet a promising, young writer and to learn more about the political intrigue of the Pinochet regime in Chile.
Along with Avi we are having a Surprise Book Exchange. Bring a book you would like to exchange, the book will be put into a brown bag and placed on the table, at the end of the night you can select one of the “surprise books” from the table.
For more information contact the Nicole at the Midway Public Library.
