Hay Festival Book Club

Both a groundbreaking coming-of-age novel and a pioneering work of autofiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit goes beyond facts into the deepest truths. Searing and tender, playful and provocative, it is a portrait of the artist as a young evangelist, re-writing her own Bible.

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A bold and beautifully written exploration of America's fraught racial history and its contemporary echoes that will redefine wider understanding of race and the roots of American identity.

100 years since the novel’s publication, join our panel of readers as they discuss Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, exploring its impact on our culture and contemporary resonance.

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Everyone in Ukraine knew that Victoria Amelina was documenting the war. She photographed the ruins of schools and cultural centers; she recorded the testimonies of survivors and eyewitnesses to atrocities. And she slowly turned back into a storyteller, writing what would become this book, and appearing at Hay Festival events around the world.

Join our panel of readers as they discuss Looking at Women, Looking at War, Amelina’s incredible account of the ravages of war and the cost of resistance. Honest, intimate, and wry, this book will be celebrated as a classic.

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Over the past five decades, Gillian Clarke’s work has examined nature, womanhood, art, music, Welsh history – and always with the precision by which her poetry is instantly recognisable.

National Poet of Wales, winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry and the Wilfred Owen Association Poetry award, Clarke is one of the best-known names in UK poetry today. Join the writer in conversation with writer and critic Jane Clarke as she revisits Selected Poems, her past collection gathering some of her best work in a single volume.

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In this profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding US history and current crises with a global resonance.

Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Published 10 years ago, it remains fresh and urgent in our divided world.

“Should be required reading for the entire human race” – The New York Times

Blending political reality with magic realism, fantasy and comic invention, One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the most daringly original works of the twentieth century.

Gabriel García Márquez's great masterpiece is the story of seven generations of the Buendía family and of Macondo, the town they built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and its miracles. A microcosm of Colombian life, its secrets lie hidden, encoded in a book, and only Aureliano Buendía can fathom its mysteries and reveal its shrouded destiny.

It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him – and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.

An exquisite winter tale of courage – and its cost, set in Catholic Ireland, Small Things Like These was a book of the year in The Times, The New Statesman, Observer, Financial Times, Irish Times, Irish Independent, Times Literary Supplement, and named one of the New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century.

The best-known of Shirley Jackson's novels and a major inspiration for writers like Neil Gaiman, Donna Tartt, and Stephen King as well as the hit Netflix series, The Haunting of Hill House is a chilling story of the power of fear.

Alone in the world, Eleanor is delighted to take up Dr Montague's invitation to spend a summer in the mysterious Hill House. Joining them are Theodora, an artistic 'sensitive', and Luke, heir to the house. But what begins as a light-hearted experiment is swiftly proven to be a trip into their darkest nightmares, and an investigation that one of their number may not survive.

This definitive horror novel blurs the lines between reality and imagination, between dream and nightmare. Beautiful, atmospheric and utterly terrifying, Jackson’s magnum opus examines the shadows that lurk not just in cobwebbed corners, but in the facets of our very minds.

The astounding, never-before-told story of how an ingenious Ghanaian con artist ran one of the 20th century's longest and most audacious frauds.

When Ghana declared independence from Britain in 1957, it immediately became a target for opportunists determined to lay hold of whatever assets colonialism hadn't already stripped. The military ousted the new nation's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of stealing the country's gold and hiding it overseas.

Into this story stepped one of history's most charismatic scammers, John Ackah Blay-Miezah – a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi. Born into poverty, Blay-Miezah declared himself the custodian of an alleged Nkrumah trust fund worth billions. You, too, could claim a piece, if only you would help him rescue it – with a small investment. Over the 1970s and '80s, he grew his scam to epic proportions, amassing hundreds of millions of pounds.

Will of the Jhalak Prize 2024, Anansi's Gold sees Yepoka Yeebo chase the ever-wilder trail of Blay-Miezah – unfolding a riveting account of Cold War entanglements and African dreams – revealing the untold story of the grifter who beat the West at its own thieving game.

Composed at the rosy-fingered dawn of world literature almost three millennia ago, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home.

This fresh, authoritative translation from Emily Wilson captures the beauty of the ancient poem as well as the drama of its narrative. Its characters are unforgettable, none more so than the “complicated” hero himself, a man of many disguises, many tricks, and many moods, who emerges in this version as a more fully rounded human being than ever before.

Written in iambic pentameter verse and a vivid, contemporary idiom, Wilson’s Odyssey sings with a voice that echoes Homer’s music; matching the number of lines in the Greek original, the poem sails along at Homer’s swift, smooth pace. Here is an Odyssey to be treasured by a new generation of readers.

Edward Chisholm’s spellbinding memoir of his time as a Parisian waiter takes you below the surface of one of the most iconic cities in the world and right into its glorious underbelly.

The waiter inhabits a world of inhuman hours, snatched sleep and dive bars; scraping by on coffee, bread and cigarettes, often under sadistic managers, with a wage so low you’re fighting your colleagues for tips.

It’s physically demanding, frequently humiliating and incredibly competitive. And with a cast of thieves, narcissists, ex-Legionnaires, paperless immigrants and drug dealers, it makes for a compelling and eye-opening read.

Jamaica, 1976. Seven gunmen storm Bob Marley’s house, machine guns blazing. The reggae superstar survives. The gunmen are never caught.

Marlon James’ dazzling novel reimagines an event that has become a modern myth. Spanning three decades, A Brief History of Seven Killings chronicles the lives of a host of unforgettable characters: slum kids, one-night stands, drug lords, girlfriends, gunmen, journalists and even the CIA.

Gripping and inventive, ambitious and mesmerising, this is a stunning new edition of one of the most acclaimed novels of the twenty-first century.

From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring — and surviving — an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him.

Speaking out with openness and honesty about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, Rushdie answers violence with art, and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. Knife is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art — and finding the strength to stand up again.

One morning, ordinary salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant cockroach…

Metamorphosis, Kafka's novella of unease and black humour, was first published in 1915 and has become one of the twentieth century's most influential works of fiction. It is the longest of the stories Kafka considered complete and published during his lifetime.

As 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of Kafka's death, this is a chance to explore his enduring global legacy through a close reading of one of his most iconic works.

Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize, this collection of short stories contains wry and defiant statements on power and the beautiful transience of youth.

Across eleven stories, Rachel Trezise effortlessly depicts the daily lives of communities in South Wales, offering a commentary on modern inequality, a bold challenge to our political systems, and a bridge across divides.

First published in 2006, it is as relevant today as ever before.

When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend’s return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened – while Giovanni’s life descends into tragedy.

Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, this now-classic story of a fated love triangle explores, with uncompromising clarity, the conflicts between desire, conventional morality and sexual identity.

A selection of Wendy Cope’s most beloved poems to offer inspiration and comfort for the new year, The Orange and other poems blends laugh-out-loud funny with the deeply moving.

From the joy of falling in love to ways to help you deal with a painful break-up or the memories of people loved and lost, this is a book you will want to savour and share with all your friends.

My heart has made its mind up
And I’m afraid it’s you.