Fiction

A middle-aged dentist with dreams of being an artist can’t stop painting mouths; a tortured Imam is in a romantic entanglement with a local vicar; an octogenarian mourns the death of the husband she thought she knew and a troubled teenager’s nudes have been leaked on the internet. Hear Nathan Newman discuss their book How to Leave the House, in which tenderness, wit and humour are found in the stories of a disparate group of characters, centred around a young man waiting for the extremely embarrassing package he ordered to arrive. Newman is a writer and filmmaker based in London whose short stories have been published in literary journals in the US and university anthologies in the UK. They talk to the internet’s resident librarian, Jack Edwards.

Colm Tóibín reunites us with the heroine of his 2009 novel, Brooklyn, in his sequel Long Island. We find Eilis Lacey 20 years on, in the 1970s, living with her husband, Tony Fiorello, and children on Long Island, rather too close to her Fiorello in-laws. A shocking piece of news propels Eilis back to Ireland, to a world she thought she had long left behind and to ways of living, and loving, she thought she had lost. Tóibín is the current Laureate for Irish Fiction. His previous novels include The Master, The Testament of Mary and House of Names. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker multiple times, and has won both the Costa Novel Award and the Impac Award. He talks to Hay Festival President Stephen Fry.

Chilean author Benjamín Labatut shines a light on the ethics of science in a disturbing triptych tracing the path from the fundamentals of mathematics to the delusions of artificial intelligence. It focuses on John von Neumann, a titan of science and a Hungarian wunderkind with exceptional mathematical powers. He designed the world's first programmable computer, invented game theory, pioneered AI and helped create the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But when illness unmoored his mind, his work pushed further into areas beyond human control.

Blending fact and fiction, Labatut takes us to the frontiers of rational thought, where invention outpaces human understanding and leads us to the brink of Armageddon. He talks to Hay Festival President Stephen Fry about The Maniac, his first book in English.

Hay Festival’s 2024 Writers at Work/Awduron wrth eu Gwaith give a public reading of their current work. An opportunity to experience the best Wales has to offer in fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Writers at Work is a creative development programme for emerging Welsh talent at Hay Festival.

The acclaimed author of The Road Home (winner of the Orange Prize), Music & Silence (winner of Whitbread Novel of the Year), and Lily (a Richard & Judy Book Club selection), Dame Rose Tremain talks to the Monocle 24 Books Editor about her piercing story of thwarted love and true friendship in 1960s London.

Marianne falls absolutely for Simon, whose cleverness and physical beauty hold the promise of a successful and monied future. But fate intervenes, Simon’s plans are blown off course, and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together. Seeming to underestimate her own worth, she nonetheless continues to seek the life she craves. But beneath his blithe exterior, Simon has been nursing a secret that will alter everything.

Hay Festival’s 2024 Writers at Work/Awduron wrth eu Gwaith give a public reading of their current work. An opportunity to experience the best Wales has to offer in fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Writers at Work is a creative development programme for emerging Welsh talent at Hay Festival.

The Women's Prize for Fiction-winning author of The Power introduces her new novel, in which a group of misfits plan an audacious heist with the future of the world at stake. When Martha Einkorn fled her father’s isolated compound in Oregon, she never expected to be working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. She may have left the cult, but if her father's apocalyptic warnings are starting to come true, how much future is left? Meanwhile, in a mall in Singapore, survivalist Lai Zhen flees from an assassin. She’s cornered and desperate. Suddenly, a piece of software appears on her phone telling her how to escape. But if those behind it can save her from danger, what do they want from her? Martha and Zhen’s worlds collide and set in motion an explosive chain of events. Alderman talks to Philippa Hall, presenter of the Quick Book Reviews podcast.

From manifesto to biography and from historical fiction to coming-of-age story, four authors of books centring on queer people discuss their work. Chris Bryant is MP for Rhondda and was the first gay MP to celebrate his civil partnership in the Palace of Westminster. His novel James and John tells the story of what it meant to be gay in early 19th-century Britain through the lens of a landmark trial. Kenny Ethan Jones’ book Dear Cis(Gender) People is a powerful call to arms empowering cisgender people to be better allies. Wendy Moore’s Jack and Eve tells the real story of a jobbing actress who became Emmeline Pankhurst’s chauffeur and mechanic, and the daughter of a Scottish baron, who became public faces of the suffragette movement. Alana S Portero is a Spanish writer, poet and transgender activist whose novel Bad Habit explores coming of age in 1980s Spain, a place of vast social inequality but also one where social change was possible.

The Scottish National Coach and mother of champions Jamie and Andy brings her debut thriller to Hay Festival. The former Scottish international tennis player is not new to publishing – her memoir Knowing the Score was a Sunday Times bestseller – but with The Wild Card she’s served up an ace in the world of fiction. Join her for a first-hand account of her story about an ambitious player who puts her promising tennis career on hold to have a baby. Years later, a surprise entry to Wimbledon sweeps her up in a world she thought she’d left behind. But could the greatest comeback of all time destroy everything she’s sacrificed to protect?

Writer and game designer Holly Gramazio – founder of the experimental games festival Now Play This and scriptwriter of the award-winning indie videogame Dicey Dungeons – talks about her debut novel The Husbands with bestselling author Naomi Alderman.

In The Husbands, Lauren finds a strange man in her flat who claims to be her husband, and the evidence all says he’s right. Soon, Lauren realises that her attic is creating an endless supply of husbands for her: the hot one, the one who makes a great breakfast sandwich, the one who can calm her. But when you can change husbands as easily as changing a lightbulb, how do you know whether the one you have now is the good-enough one, or the wrong one, or the best one?

Princess Mary was the adored only child of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon and was raised in the golden splendour of her father’s court. But her world soon began to fall apart: the King wanted a son and heir, and her parents’ marriage was crumbling. Exiled from the court and her beloved mother, she sought solace in her faith but found the choices she faced would haunt her for years to come. Alison Weir fictionalises the life of Princess Mary, who went on to be known as Bloody Mary, in her new Tudor novel. She discusses the drama and tragedy of the royal’s life.

Pip Williams didn’t always love words, which is ironic given her bestselling and award-winning novels are both focused on language. She discusses both books – The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho – as well as the way in which she pursued words to understand their power to control and their potential to enrich. Williams also talks about her research in the archives of Oxford University Press, her efforts to bind her own books and the irony of writing about words when she still has trouble spelling them. She talks to Louise Adler, director of Adelaide Writers’ Week.

Waterstones Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho is joined by fellow authors Frank Cottrell-Boyce (Patron of The Reader Organisation) and Cressida Cowell (Children’s Laureate 2019–22) as they delve into the history of children’s literature, taking us on a whistle stop tour of some of their own all-time favourite books. They discuss the benefits of reading through childhood and consider the impact their own works may have had on the young, developing brain, while acclaimed film and stage actor Freddie Fox (The Crown, House of the Dragon) performs readings from some much-loved children’s classics.

Brought to you by The Queen’s Reading Room, the literary charity set up by Her Majesty Queen Camilla, which is on a mission to spread the joy of reading.

Two of the best young British novelists of 2023, as selected by Granta magazine, discuss their recent books. Sarah Bernstein’s Study for Obedience is about a woman who moves from the place of her birth to the remote northern country of her ancestors, to be housekeeper to her recently divorced brother. There, a strange series of unfortunate events begin to occur and she is put under suspicion by the locals. Eley Williams’ Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good is a new collection of stories from the award-winning author of The Liar’s Dictionary and Attrib. and Other Stories. The stories explore uncertainty and how we grapple with it, as well as misunderstandings and confusions in a world that appears bound by rules and codes, both spoken and unspoken. The authors speak to writer Max Liu.

The Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question interrogates the power of love to change your life, and vice versa, in his 17th novel What Will Survive of Us. Lily and Sam, both highly successful in their careers but marking time in relationships that have quietly expired, find a connection that makes them come alive again. As they begin to work together on the page and on screen, an affair takes hold that they are powerless to resist. Arriving in mid-life, their relationship opens unexpected new worlds. But what will happen to them when familiarity, illness and age begin to take their toll? Jacobson talks to the Monocle 24 Books Editor

Two multiple Booker-nominated authors discuss their new novels with the Monocle 24 Books Editor. Andrew O’Hagan’s Mayflies won huge acclaim and has been adapted as an award-winning BBC drama. His latest, Caledonian Road, is a state-of-the-nation novel – the story of one man’s epic fall from grace. The writer introduces us to art historian and celebrity intellectual Campbell Flynn, whose web of crimes, secrets and scandals risk being revealed, leading to the shattering exposure of all that his privilege really involves.

Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways and China Room received major accolades. His most recent novel, The Spoiled Heart, is a moving family mystery. Nayan, a bereaved father now dedicated to his work and running for leadership of his union, is powerfully drawn to a woman who has returned to the area. As they grow closer, the possibility arises that their pasts may have been connected.

Ukraine’s most celebrated novelist transports us to early 20th-century Kyiv during the turmoil following the Russian Revolution, with his new book The Silver Bone. This mystery introduces rookie detective Samson Kolechko in Kyiv as he tackles his first case, involving two murders, a long bone made of pure silver and a suit of decidedly unusual proportions tailored from fine English cloth. Inflected with Kurkov’s (Death and the Penguin) signature humour and magical realism, the novel takes inspiration from the archives of crime enforcement agencies in Kyiv, crafting a propulsive narrative with rich historical detail. Kurkov talks to writer and editor Daniel Hahn.

Award-winning poet Andrew McMillan talks to Scottish poet and playwright Jackie Kay about community, masculinity and post-industrialisation. His novel Pity is set in Northern England, in a town that was once a hub of the coal industry. Where fathers and grandfathers worked down the mines, their sons now grapple with the shifting times. Meanwhile a grandson works in a call centre, deriving passion from his side hustle in sex work and his weekly drag gigs. Set across three generations of a Yorkshire mining family, McMillan’s short and magnificent debut is a lament for a lost way of life as well as a celebration of resilience and the possibility for change.

Helen Garner’s first novel, Monkey Grip, was published in 1977 and immediately established her as an original voice on the Australian literary scene – it’s now considered a classic. Garner is widely recognised as one of Australia’s greatest living writers and has received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, the prestigious Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Non-fiction and the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.

Up to now her books have rarely been published this side of the Atlantic, but that’s about to change. Join Garner at Hay Festival on a rare trip to the UK to celebrate the launch of her novels Monkey Grip, a seminal novel of Australian counterculture, and The Children’s Bach, a sparkling family novel set against the bohemian underground of 1980s Melbourne, as well as her non-fiction work This House of Grief, an engrossing true-crime story.

The 18th century is drawing to a close, unrest grips France and Sister Perpetue is guarding the patient known as the Glutton of Lyon. He has supposedly eaten all manner of creatures and objects, including a child. The now-frail man, whose real name is Tarare, was cast out and left for dead, igniting his ferocious appetite. His extraordinary abilities to eat made him a marvel throughout the land. AK Blakemore discusses her new novel The Glutton, which takes us to a world of tumult and depravity, wherein the hunger of one peasant is matched only by the insatiable demands of the people of France. Blakemore is author of The Manningtree Witches. Her writing has appeared in the London Review of Books and Poetry Review. Blakemore talks to the Monocle Radio Books Editor, Georgina Godwin.

Two giants of historical fiction discuss their stories, and how and why they tell them. Follett’s latest novel The Armour of Light is set in his fictional Kingsbridge in 1792, with revolution in the air. As industrial change sweeps the land and a tyrannical government is determined to make England a mighty commercial empire, a small group of spinners and weavers fight for a future free from oppression. Mosse’s The Ghost Ship is an epic story of concealed identity, piracy and revenge, ranging from Paris to Amsterdam and the Canary Islands in the early 1600s. The Ghost Ship hunts pirates to liberate those enslaved during the course of their merciless raids – but now it is under attack.

Hari Kunzru (The Impressionist, Transmission) shares his gripping and brilliantly orchestrated new novel. Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time to deliver an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind. Once, Jay was a promising artist, but now, undocumented in the US, he lives out of his car, delivering groceries at the height of the pandemic. A delivery leads him to a chance encounter with a former lover from his art school days – setting a reckoning decades in the making into motion. Kunzru talks to the TLS Fiction and Politics Editor.

Join Laura Dockrill, author, illustrator and judge of the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction, and Kate Mosse, author and founding director of the Women's Prizes, in conversation with Isabella Hammad (Enter Ghost) and Claire Kilroy (Soldier Sailor) two of the writers shortlisted for the 2024 prize. They discuss their selected novels, their broader themes and the impact the prize has on both writers and readers.

The winner of the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction will be announced on Thursday 13 June. Brought to you by the Women's Prize Trust, the charity which enriches society by creating equitable opportunities for women in the world of books and beyond.

Award-winning Nigerian writer Chigozie Obioma’s first novel The Fishermen was a finalist for the Booker prize, and his second, An Orchestra of Minorities, was also shortlisted. His latest book The Road to the Country intertwines myth and realism and is destined to stand alongside Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun as the defining novel of one of the most devastating civil wars of the 20th century. Set in Nigeria in the late 1960s, it’s the epic story of a shy, bookish student haunted by long-held guilt and shame who must go to war to free himself. When Kunle’s younger brother disappears as his country explodes in civil war, Kunle sets out on an impossible rescue mission and a journey of atonement. Obioma talks to the TLS Fiction and Politics Editor.

Awarded for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under, the Dylan Thomas Prize celebrates the international world of fiction in all its forms. Join us to celebrate the 2024 winner in conversation with novelist Jon Gower, a member of the 2024 prize jury.

The longlist for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2024 is: Ayòbámi Adébáyò – A Spell of Good Things; Caleb Azumah Nelson – Small Worlds; AK Blakemore – The Glutton; Mary Jean Chan – Bright Fear; Eliza Clark – Penance; Camilla Grudova – The Coiled Serpent; Kevin Jared Hosein – Hungry Ghosts; Joshua Jones – Local Fires; Catherine Lacey – Biography of X; Michael Magee – Close To Home; Thomas Morris – Open Up; Kae Tempest – Divisible by Itself and One.

In Leo Vardiashvili’s novel Hard by a Great Forest, Saba’s father Irakli is missing, and the trail leads back to Tbilisi, Georgia. It’s been two decades since Saba saw his mother, who stayed so that his father could escape with two young sons, now grown men. Arriving in Tbilisi as escaped zoo animals prowl the streets, Saba picks up a path of clues: strange graffiti, bewildering messages transmitted through the radio, pages from his father’s unpublished manuscript. He discovers that all roads lead back to the past, and to secrets swallowed up by the great forests of Georgia. Vardiashvili, who came to London as a refugee from Georgia 30 years ago, talks to writer, comedian and broadcaster Viv Groskop.

Following the massive success of his long-lost novel TerrorTome, Sunday Times bestseller and Archduke O’Darkdom Garth Marenghi is back on the road with his latest masterpiece, Incarcerat. This highly anticipated sequel continues the adventures of horror novelist Nick Steen, who gets sucked into a cursed typewriter.

Don’t miss this opportunity to see Marenghi’s live show and hear his terrifying tale. His TerrorTome UK tour sold over 27,000 tickets in under six months, and Incarcerat is set to be another thrilling journey.

Garth Marenghi is the pseudonym of writer and director Matthew Holness, best known for his role as the fictional horror author in the cult Channel 4 comedy series Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. Holness is author of many short stories for horror anthologies and has written and directed several films, including the horror feature Possum.

Hay Festival’s 2024 Writers at Work/Awduron wrth eu Gwaith give a public reading of their current work. An opportunity to experience the best Wales has to offer in fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Writers at Work is a creative development programme for emerging Welsh talent at Hay Festival.

The internationally acclaimed Irish novelist’s Prophet Song won the Booker Prize 2023. On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish answers her door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police. They’re here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. Ireland is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling. With literary journalist Alex Clark, Lynch discusses his devastating vision of a country at war and his deeply human portrait of a dystopia that could be just around the corner.

A Brief History of Seven Killings exploded onto the literary scene in 2014, winning the 2015 Man Booker Prize. Ten years after its publication, Marlon James presents a new edition exploring the ongoing cultural and historical fascination with Bob Marley. In Jamaica, 1976, seven gunmen storm Marley’s house, machine guns blazing. The superstar survives but the gunmen are never caught. James’s novel reimagines an event that has become a modern myth, as he chronicles the lives of slum kids, one-night stands, drug lords, girlfriends, gunmen, journalists and even the CIA. James talks to novelist and literary director Adam Biles of Shakespeare and Company. A Brief History of Seven Killings is the Hay Festival Book Club pick for June.

Sarah Marsh discusses her accomplished debut, inspired by her experiences of growing up deaf and her family’s history of deafness. Receiving an unexpected visit from Alexander Graham Bell, Ellen Lark knows at once what he wants from her. Ellen is deaf, and for a time was Bell’s student, when he confided in her his dream of producing a device to transmit the human voice along a wire: the telephone. Now, Bell wants Ellen to speak up in support of his claim to the patent, which is being challenged by rivals. But she has a different story to tell: that of how Bell betrayed her, and other deaf pupils, in pursuit of ambition and personal gain. Marsh talks to historian Professor Suzannah Lipscomb.

There will be a BSL interpreter at this event

Travel between the Rocky Mountains and Trinidad with authors Kevin Barry and Ingrid Persaud, who discuss their new novels with critic Alex Clark. Barry’s The Heart in Winter is about Tom Rourke, a young poet and a degenerate in Montana in the late 1800s. When Polly Gillespie arrives as the new bride of the devout mine captain, Tom falls in love with her and they ride into the sunset, but a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen is soon in hot pursuit. Persaud's The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh is the tale of four women, connected and controlled by one man: the notorious, charismatic gangster Boysie Singh.