A reading and conversation with two outstanding emerging novelists whose utterly compelling and very different books display a rare and wonderful mastery of voice. Gunaratne’s debut, In the Mad and Furious City follows three young men on a London council estate caught up in a wave of anger and rioting following the killing of a soldier. Sackville’s Painter to the King charts Velasquez’ time at the court of King Philip IV of Spain, a court collapsing under the weight of its own excess. They read and talk to Georgina Godwin.