Fiction

American-Libyan writer Hisham Matar’s new novel is about three Libyan men in political exile in London, and the emotional homeland that deep friendships can provide. It begins in 1984, the year that officials inside the Libyan embassy in London’s St James’s Square fired a machine gun into a crowd of unarmed protesters. Matar’s earlier novel, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, about his father’s abduction by Gaddafi’s forces and the decades-long quest to discover his fate, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He discusses his new book with Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer.

Fiona Williams’ The House of Broken Bricks focuses on Tess and Richard; the former yearns for the comforting chaos of life as it once was while the latter fights to get his winter crops planted rather than deal with the discussion he cannot face. Williams discusses her story of a broken family, who might be able to heal as the seasons change, with novelist Ingrid Persaud.

Authors Anna Funder and Sandra Newman discuss George Orwell, and highlight the women forgotten in his life and his work. Funder’s Wifedom is a non-fiction book about Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, whose literary brilliance shaped Orwell’s work. Largely forgotten now, she is brought back to life by Funder, using newly discovered letters. Newman is the author of Julia, a retelling of Orwell’s 1984. The book explores state control over women’s bodies and the terror of totalitarianism. Newman was chosen by the Orwell Estate to write the novel and has the approval of George Orwell’s son, Richard Blair.

Palestinian writer Adania Shibli discusses her novel Minor Detail with poet Victoria Adukwei Bulley. A story about a young woman raped in the mist of the Palestian/Israeli conflict of 1949, the book was longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature.

Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba – the catastrophe that led to the displacement and expulsion of more than 700,000 people – and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman, and kill and bury her in the sand. Many years later, a woman in Ramallah becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with this ‘minor detail’ of history. A haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.

The 2014 Booker Prize winner (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) and 2002 Commonwealth Prize winner (Gould’s Book of Fish) discusses his new novel with the literary journalist. Beginning at a love hotel by Japan’s Inland Sea and ending by a river in Tasmania, Question 7 is about the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows. By way of HG Wells and Rebecca West’s affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan’s father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die.

Prize-winning novelist and short story writer Ingrid Persaud leads a workshop on developing your own unique voice through fiction. Your writer’s voice is something you will spend your entire life thinking about. It is your authentic signature and your writer’s personality; it is what makes your writing distinct and immediately recognisable. During this session you’ll develop your understanding of style, perspective and tone, leaving with a sense of how voice makes your work outstanding.

Daniel Clement has suffered a secret humiliation and to recover, takes respite at the monastery where he was a novice. But there are tensions building there, too, as the dark past of novice master Father Paul emerges, and a murder ensues. Meanwhile back at the village of Champton, Daniel is the subject of gossip, his mother Audrey is up to something again, there's trouble at the dress shop, and the puppies are running riot. The Anglican priest who co-presented Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4 for 11 years and has won Celebrity Mastermind twice discusses the third book in his Canon Clement Mystery series with radiohost Natasha Knight.

Playwright and novelist Michael Frayn discusses the art of storytelling with his daughter, screenwriter and novelist Rebecca Frayn, in an event chaired by his grandson, producer and filmmaker Jack Harries. They discuss Michael Frayn’s memoir Among Others, Rebecca Frayn’s new novel Lost in Ibiza, and much more. Michael Frayn is best known for his dramas Noises Off, Copenhagen and Democracy. Rebecca Frayn is a documentary maker and screenwriter whose work includes Killing Me Softly and Misbehaviour. Harries is a documentary filmmaker and producer, co-founder of Earthrise Studio.