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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »“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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »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
Find out more »The writer and journalist Harry Eyres brings you an evening of essential life advice from Horace, the ancient poet who coined the phrase ‘carpe diem’. He reveals how Horace can help us navigate our way through life, love and leisure. The humble son of a freed slave, Horace championed the saving grace of modest pleasures: poetry, leisure and wine. His writing has much to say about how to live now. For him, poetry, therapy and friendship are all related. ‘Happy is she or he&hellip
Find out more »Critics sometimes remark on the humour in novelists such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens as if it’s a quality of the writing the reader needs permission to enjoy. Meanwhile many other books that are hailed as comic masterpieces barely raise a smile. What makes humour the poor relation of so much literature? And is it time to take comedy rather more seriously? This is part of the Highgate & Hampstead Literary Festival. More information/book tickets
Find out more »Deborah Moggach’s new book, Heartbreak Hotel (all reviews here) is a warm, wise and funny romp in the Welsh countryside, which will appeal to the legions of fans who enjoyed the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Lottie Moggach’s Kiss Me First (all reviews here) is a moving coming of age story hidden within a harrowing mystery. While Lottie explores a lot of dark territory – suicide, alienation, innocence betrayed – she has also written an unexpectedly warm-hearted novel. This is part of the Highgate & Hampstead&hellip
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