Fiction

Poets Małgorzata Lebda and Joelle Taylor discuss the many and varied relationships between women, violence against women, and how women support one another.

Lebda’s novel Voracious follows a year in the life of a young woman caring for her dying grandmother. As her grandfather renovates a room for his wife, the women care for one another, for the plants and for the animals. Lebda is a poet with eight collections to her name. Voracious is the winner of Empik’s Best Newcomer in Poland and is shortlisted for the Angelus Prize, the Conrad Prize and the NIKE Award.

Taylor’s The Night Alphabet reveals interconnecting tales of a woman whose body is covered in tattoos. She reveals the story behind each tattoo to the artists linking all the art on her body together. It is a deep investigation into human nature and violence against women. Taylor is a queer, working class author of six plays and four collections of poetry, most recently C+nto & Othered Poems, winner of the 2022 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry and the 2022 Polari Prize.

José Eustasio Rivera’s classic Latin American novel The Vortex is widely recognised as one of the best novels written in Colombia. It follows young poet Arturo Cova and his lover, Alicia, as they elope from Bogotá and embark on an adventure through Colombia’s varied and magical landscapes. When Alicia disappears, Arturo and his unstoppable ego must follow her. In pursuing her, Arturo becomes an inadvertent witness to the appalling conditions suffered by workers forced or tricked into tapping rubber trees.

Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez (The Sound of Things Falling, Retrospective) and Erna von der Walde, a specialist in Colombian and Latin American literature, culture and politics, have written a new foreword for the book. They talk to Daniel Hahn – one of the translators into English of The Vortex – about this inventive, funny and wildly prescient novel about the human and environmental costs of extractive systems.

Explore a passionate love affair tested to its limits with Eimear McBride (A Girl is a Half-formed Thing). She talks to Toby Lichtig, fiction and politics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, about her trailblazing new novel, an intimate, experiential and immersive story of passion, jealousy and family.

London, 1995. Outside the filthy window, the city rushes by. But up in the flat, there is only Eily and Stephen, 19 and 39. The total obsession of new love. Eighteen months later in a rainy Camden night, Eily and Stephen retrace the course of their two-year romance now their world is merging with the commonplace and ties from the past are intruding.

Two writers discuss safety and the unexpected, control and danger, in their new books, with Monocle Radio books editor Georgina Godwin.

When an albatross strays too far from its home, or loses its bearings, it becomes an ‘accidental’, an unmoored wanderer. The protagonists of Guadalupe Nettel’s stories in The Accidentals each find the ordinary courses of their lives disrupted and are pushed into unfamiliar terrain. The Mexican-born author’s novel Still Born was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.

Saba Sams’ debut novel Gunk is about the complex relationship between the frustrated ex-wife of a student nightclub owner in Brighton and the enigmatic young woman hired to work the establishment’s bar. It explores love and desire, chaos and control, and family in all its forms. Sams was a Granta Best of Young British Novelists in 2023 and her debut collection Send Nudes won the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2022.

Marking 40 years of Jeanette Winterson’s explosive first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Published when she was just 25, the book is a gripping coming-of-age story, a queer romance and a modern classic. It tells the story of Jeanette’s avatar, a fiction as well as a fact. Adopted into a northern, working-class family who believe their new baby is destined to be a missionary, Jeanette falls in love with a young woman. Love, as always, changes the road ahead.

In 2011 Jeanette Winterson revisited this material in her best selling memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Read it? Let us know what you think on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram using #HFBookClub.

Further reading

Digested classics, The Guardian
“She gave me the chance that became my life”: Jeanette Winterson on her first editor, Philippa Brewster, The Guardian

About the author

Jeanette Winterson CBE, was born in Manchester. She published her first novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in 1985. It was adapted by her for the BBC in 1990 and won a BAFTA for best drama. Jeanette Winterson has written numerous novels, short stories, works for children, screenplays, and non-fiction. She regularly talks to tech conferences, following her essays about AI: 12 Bytes. Her latest book is the collection of ghost stories, Night Side of the River.
She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester.

About Hay Festival Book Club

Timeless titles to offer you a break from the day to day. Can't decide what to read next? Follow your curiosity and join Hay Festival on a journey to imagine the world anew through great literature. Unconstrained by genre or form these are our monthly picks of great books worth reading (or re-reading) right now.

Throughout the month, we'll share interesting links and articles relating to our selection on social media using #HFBookClub and invite you all to get involved with your questions and comments. Each selection will also be marked with a free online event.

If you'd like to recommend a book for consideration, get in touch via bookclub@hayfestival.org.

Happy reading!

Storyteller Ngartia Bryan examines the power of narratives with Ayisha Osori of Open Society Foundations. They look at how our stories define our identity, and different mediums for telling our tales.

Writer, actor and director Bryan is a storyteller with interest in different media, and one of the founders of Kenyan multi-award-winning storytelling theatre group Too Early For Birds. Osori is a director in Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop.

A Room Above a Shop is set in South Wales during the decade of Section 28. Against the backdrop of the HIV/AIDS crisis and all its accompanying moral judgement, this is a resonant love story about two men working together in an ironmonger’s shop and sharing a room upstairs. It’s a life they’d never imagined possible and one that risks everything if their public performance were to slip.

Anthony Shapland grew up in the Rhymney Valley. A writer, artist and filmmaker who blends documentary and fiction, he is co-founder of g39, an artist-led space in Cardiff. He talks to Welsh author Cynan Jones about his debut novel and his short fiction Feathertongue, broadcast by Radio 4 this spring.

Rob Rinder takes us into the world of his latest crime novel, set in the glamorous world of art. At a star-studded opening night for the Royal Academy’s celebration of renowned artist Max Bruce, the occasion takes a shocking turn when a protester runs from the crowd and sprays the artist with blue paint.

Max collapses and it soon turns out that the paint was laced with cyanide. Newly qualified barrister Adam Green is assigned the impossible task of defending the protestor, but it seems there may have been others who wanted Max dead.

Rinder is a barrister turned broadcaster and author. He started his broadcast career with Judge Rinder, and is now a regular host on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. His novels The Trial and The Suspect are inspired by his experiences as a barrister.