Author Aminatta Forna will discuss topics from her recently released novel “The Hired Man” tonight in the Hall Center for the Humanities Conference Hall, followed by a reception and book signing.

With war, memory and identity at the center of “The Hired Man,” the story takes place in the Croatian town of Gost and explores the effects of the Yugoslav wars of the ’90s. The Guardian called the novel “an ingenious examination of the kind of ghosts that those with no experience of war are unable to see.”

Forna is an award-winning author of two other novels, “The Memory of Love” and “Ancestor Stones,” and a memoir, “The Devil That Danced on the Water.” She was born in Glasgow, Scotland, raised in Sierra Leone and Britain, and spent parts of her childhood in Iran, Zambia and Thailand.

The program starts at 5 p.m. and is free and open to the public.