For centuries, we have tried and failed to answer the questions – what is art, what is not, and why do we bother making it?

In The Upside-Down World, Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser documents his decades-long love affair with the Dutch Masters who lived and worked in the shadow of Rembrandt and Vermeer. From the doomed virtuoso Carel Fabritius to the anguished wunderkind Jan Lievens, Moser has befriended dozens of often overlooked geniuses in a quest to form a deeper understanding of these master artists and the country they called home.

Sumptuously illustrated and surprisingly intimate, Moser’s latest is simultaneously a highly personal coming-of-age story and an invitation to ask the big questions, and then ask them again.

Benjamin Moser is the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. His work bringing Clarice Lispector to international prominence was recognized with Brazil’s State Prize for Cultural Diplomacy. His most recent book, Sontag: Her Life, won the Pulitzer Prize.

This event will be chaired by Caroline Campbell, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland.