Aristotle, Alexander, and Annabel Lyon at UPEI

Annabel Lyon, author of the best-selling novel The Golden Mean, will give a public reading on Thursday, March 24, at 7:30 p.m. in the UPEI Faculty Lounge, Main Building.

Annabel Lyon burst on the literary scene in 2000 with a superb short story collection, Oxygen, and followed in 2004 with three novellas in The Best Thing for You. She then delved into classical Greece, researching the lives of the brilliant philosopher Aristotle and his most famous student, who would become Alexander the Great, and the result is her extraordinary first novel. The Golden Mean won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was nominated for the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

A review in The New Yorker praises her 'vivid imagining of the encounter between Aristotle and the young Alexander....Lyon's evocation of the ancient world is earthy and immediate.' Alexander struggles between a keen mind that desires knowledge and the pressures of a society demanding his prowess as a soldier. Aristotle strives to match his ideas against the warrior culture that is Alexander's birthright - to instill in him 'the golden mean,' that elusive balance between extremes that Aristotle hopes will mitigate the boy's will to conquer. Lyon brilliantly shows how this relationship affects both men's lives, their ambitions, achievements, and disappointments, beyond the hours of tutoring.

Her reading is sponsored by the UPEI English Department with support from The Canada Council of the Arts. A reception and book signing will follow.