THE DEATH AND LIFE OF AUGUST SWEENEY | A Busboys & Poets Books Presentation

One of the most sumptuous and inventive novels I’ve read in years. In language that sings with seductive detail, Ashworth twines the stories of a magnetic celebrity chef with the obsessive doctor assigned to his autopsy. Not since Jim Crace’s Being Dead has death contained all the drama and intrigue of life. I flew through this novel but the aftertaste—of pleasure and passion and longing—lingers still.” —Tania James, author of the National Book Award-longlisted Loot

Legendary chef August Sweeney has served his final meal, collapsing in the middle of service in the very restaurant he built to secure his legacy.

When Dr. Maya Zhu, a guarded, intense autopsist, is summoned to investigate, she discovers she must operate under strict conditions Sweeney himself dictated before he died. As she digs deeper into his immense body, everything that can go wrong does, because August Sweeney isn’t about to let a little thing like death stop him from raising hell.

August was a man whose glorious appetite for excess led him from the bowels of greasy spoons to the towering heights of culinary stardom, before bringing him crashing back down to earth. Maya is a doctor who has always believed that her success—even her survival—required her to become a human scalpel: sharp and solitary. The moment Maya meets August, dead on her dissection table, it sets off a chain reaction that will change her life—and his death—forever.

The product of the author’s years of research into clinical pathology and fine dining alike, including weeks observing autopsies and a stint as a prep cook in a Michelin-starred kitchen, The Death and Life of August Sweeney offers a window into the human body and an unprecedentedly accurate depiction of the restaurant industry. Along the way, it examines what it means to hunger for greatness, and how redemption can be found in the unlikeliest of places.

Samuel Ashworth is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside author Mary Kay Zuravleff. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Ashworth will be signing following the program.

This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 5:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of THE DEATH AND LIFE OF AUGUST SWEENEY will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed.

We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books

Samuel Ashworth’s fiction and nonfiction appear in the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Longreads, Eater, Punch, Hazlitt, and others. He is a former columnist for The Rumpus, where he wrote the popular “Dispatches from the Swamp” column about life in DC. He teaches creative writing at George Washington University and lives with his wife and two sons in Washington, DC.

Mary Kay Zuravleff is the award-winning author of American Ending, chosen for Oprah’s Spring Reading List. Earlier novels include Man Alive!, a Washington Post Notable Book, and The Frequency of Souls, winner of the American Academy’s Rosenthal Award and the James Jones First Novel Award. She lives in Washington, DC.

Host or Publisher Busboys and Poets