Literary Calendar
Events for July 23, 2013 through September 12, 2013
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Attention! Joshua Cohen in conversation with Brian Dillon, LRB
Joshua Cohen was born in New Jersey in 1980 and is the author of five works of fiction. Of one of them, Witz, the LRB’s Christian Lorentzen wrote (in the New York Observer) ‘[It is] the sort of postmodern epic that arrives like a comet about once every decade, likeInfinite Jest or Gravity’s Rainbow.’ In Attention! a (short) history(Notting Hill Editions) he turns his shrewdly attentive gaze on attention itself: what it has been, what it is now, how we pay it, and how it can&hellip
David Goodhart on The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration, Foyles
David Goodhart argues that liberal thinking on immigration has, in recent years, promoted two contradictory ideals. On the one hand there is the ideal of ‘solidarity’, or the desire that people in society, wherever they originate from, should be unified by one common purpose. And on the other hand there is the ‘diversity’ argument, which calls for the differences that immigration brings to society to be celebrated. In Goodhart’s opinion diversity has won out over solidarity, leading him to advocate&hellip
Judith Mackrell in conversation with Sarah Churchwell about Flappers, Daunt Bookshop
For many young women, the 1920′s was a promise of liberty: they shortened their skirts and shingled their hair, smoked, drank, took drugs and claimed sexual freedoms.In Flappers, celebrated dance critic Judith Mackrell follows six women – Diana Cooper, Nancy Cunard, Tallulah Bankhead, Zelda Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker and Tamara de Lempicka – who, between them, exemplified the range and daring of that generation’s spirit.Sarah Churchwell’s latest book, Careless People, also explores the 1920′s, and the scandals that rocked America’s upper&hellip
Emily’s Walking Book Club reads Breakfast with the Nikolides, Daunt Bookshop
Join other book-lovers for a walk on Hampstead Heath to discuss Rumer Godden’s coming-of-age classic. Fleeing Nazi France, Louise brings her two daughters to India to be reunited with her husband. Here, eleven-year-old Emily finds herself caught in a tangled web of adult relationships, as fragile and troubled as the family’s feelings towards India, their new home. First published in 1942, Godden’s haunting novel of lost innocence is an enduring classic. More information/book tickets
Robert Adam on The Globalisation of Modern Architecture, Foyles
Based on the principle that design unavoidably follows social change, politics and economics, Robert Adam’s analysis in The Globalisation of Modern Architecture casts a new light on recent building. In Adam’s view, globalisation is driving out the uniqueness and character of cities and buildings, reducing them to a monotonous regularity. But does architecture and do architects nowadays really lack an inner conviction, leaving them prey to the vicissitudes of outside forces? Tonight Adam will be defending his thesis in front of our&hellip
Susie Boyt and Damian Barr at Hardy’s Brasserie, Marylebone
Dinner and a show! Come and hear Susie Boyt and Damian Barr discuss identity, forgiveness and the importance of jokes to survival. Susie Boyt’s books include The Small Hours and her memoir, My Judy Garland Life. Damian Barr has just published his memoir, Maggie and Me. For more information, email hardysbookdinners@gmail.com. More information/book tickets
Rachel Kushner in conversation with Nina Power, LRB
Rachel Kushner’s new novel The Flamethrowers takes place in the art world of the 1970s, and explores themes of gender, terrorism and authenticity. Naomi Fry wrote in the LRB ‘Kushner isn’t only a novelist. She is also a regular contributor of sharp criticism to such free-thinking American publications as Artforum, and however good her stories and sparkling her prose, she has other aims in her novel too. Its subject is inequality – economic, social, sexual – but the art world, with its attendant performances, is&hellip
The White Review No.8 launch, Foyles
The second launch event for The White Review No. 8 will be taking place at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, on Thursday 22 August from 6.30-8.30pm. ‘Writing by women simply isn’t read, received, or written about in the way writing by men is,’ writes Lauren Elkin in her essay ‘Barking from the Margins: on écriture féminine’, featured in The White Review No. 8. To mark the launch, Lauren will be in conversation with Katherine Angel, author of Unmastered: A Book On Desire, Most Difficult To Tell,&hellip
Margaret Atwood, Southbank Centre
Margaret Atwood discusses the hugely-anticipated final novel in her dystopian trilogy. A man-made plague has swept the earth but a small group survives, along with the green-eyed Crakers – a gentle species bio-engineered to replace humans. Told with wit, dizzying imagination and dark humour, Booker Prize-winning Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam is unpredictable, chilling and hilarious. It takes us further into a challenging dystopian world and holds up a skewed mirror to our own possible future. This novel completes the trilogy which began with Oryx&hellip
The Hatchards Bloomsbury Book Club with Margaret Atwood at the Bloomsbury Institute
Margaret Atwood will be at the Bloomsbury Institute to talk about MaddAddam, the hugely-anticipated final novel in the dystopian trilogy that began with Oryx and Crakeand The Year of the Flood. In a little enclave called the cob house a motley crew of survivors live alongside the green-eyed Crakers – a gentle, inquisitive species bio-engineered to replace humans. Toby, a member of the now-defunct Gods Gardeners, knows about mushrooms, poultices and bees, and is still in love with Zeb. The Crakers’ reluctant prophet, Snowman&hellip
Teju Cole talks to Max Liu, LRB
On a rare visit to London, New York-Lagos writer Teju Cole will be at the bookshop to talk about his work. His novel Open City, the narrative of a young Nigerian-German psychiatrist as he walks around New York and, briefly, Brussels, has received unalloyed praise, won the PEN/Hemingway award and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize and the National Book Critics Circle award. James Wood has called it “Beautiful, subtle, and finally, original… ”, and Colm Tóibín wrote of it, “The&hellip
Jilted Generation with Ed Howker and Shiv Malik, Southbank
Ed Howker and Shiv Malik discuss the Jilted Generation, the millions of young people in Britain who face an uncertain future. In the fifties, Britain was told we’d ‘never had it so good’. In the 1990s, ‘things’ could ‘only get better’. Today, things are actually getting worse. Why? Standards of living are falling for new generations. Young people in Britain are unemployed and homeless on an unprecedented scale – the unwitting victims of policy errors going back decades. Jilted Generation looks again&hellip
Hannah Kent in conversation with Sarah Moss, Daunt Bookshop, Marylebone
Daunt Books is delighted to introduce author Hannah Kent, who will be discussing her superb novel Burial Rites, the most talked about debut of the year. As haunting as it is beautiful, Burial Rites explores the true story of a young woman condemned to death for the murder of her lover in Iceland, 1829. Sarah Moss is the author of Names for the Sea, an extraordinary account of her year living in Iceland with two small children in the same&hellip
African Writers’ Evening: Point of Protest, Southbank
Writers discuss how point of view might be a point of protest in writing about Africa. Africa has been enveloped in centuries of externally imposed myth, often grand and romanticised with rarely any space for the voices of the mundane. The fact of any individual voice emerging, having its own humour, expressing awareness of its place, can be seen as an act of protest. Following in the tradition of writers such as Mongo Beti, whose Poor Christ of Bomba caused&hellip
Deborah Levy and Juan Pablo Villalobos, Keats House
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” – Leo Tolstoy With razor-sharp humour and curiosity, celebrated authors Deborah Levy and Juan Pablo Villalobos explore the meaning of family and belonging. Deborah Levy’s novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012, and her latest collection of stories, Black Vodka, has been shortlisted for the International Frank O’Connor Award. From swans with a sinister sleeping sickness to a forest outside Prague, Black&hellip
An Evening with Ruth Rendell at The Rose Theatre
Next year Ruth will celebrate her 50th anniversary as a published writer. This is a unique opportunity to hear Ruth Rendell talk about her long and successful career in writing wrongs, and to hear about her new Wexford novel No Man’s Nightingale. Ruth Rendell will be in conversation with Peter Kemp, Fiction Editor at The Sunday Times. More information/book tickets
Eleanor Catton, Southbank
Eleanor Catton, prize-winning author of The Rehearsal, presents her definition-defying second novel, The Luminaries. Eleanor Catton, born in 1985, is the author of The Rehearsal, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, longlisted for the Orange Prize, winner of the Betty Trask Award and published in twelve languages. Tonight she presents her second novel, The Luminaries, a work of fiction that combines murder mystery, historical adventure and astrological puzzle… a breath-taking piece of storytelling where everything is connected&hellip
Multiples: Adam Thirlwell with Tash Aw, A.S. Byatt and Joe Dunthorne, LRB
Is it possible that translation could be an optimistic art? In an effort to experiment with this possibility, the novelist Adam Thirlwell, on behalf of McSweeney’s Quarterly, invented an experiment: what would happen if a story were successively translated by a series of novelists, each one working only from the version immediately prior to their own – the aim being to preserve that story’s style? The result was a compendium of 12 stories, in up to six versions each, in 17&hellip
Damian Barr at Polari, Southbank
The LGBT literary showcase, with Damian Barr reading from his acclaimed memoir Maggie & Me. Heading the bill in September, Damian Barr is joined by Lois Walden, Bernardine Evaristo, Susie Boyt and Nick Field. Also tonight, the shortlist for the Polari First Book Prize 2013 is announced. Described by the New York Times as ‘London’s most theatrical salon’, LGBT literary showcase Polari returns. Polari gives a platform to the best in established, new and up-and-coming LGBT literary talent and performance. More information/book tickets
Samuel Beckett and Judaism, LJCC
For virtually all of his life Irish playwright Samuel Beckett was personally connected with the Jewish people. This presentation will explore those connections and highlight traces of a hidden Jewish context and wartime suffering in Waiting for Godot and other postwar works. More information/book tickets