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Events: African Literature at the London Literature Festival, 5 -16 October 2016, London

By Africa in Words on 5 October , 2016 • ( 1 )

London Literature Festival

Living in Future Times

Wednesday 5 October 2016 – Sunday 16 October 2016

Picture courtesy of http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/

The world today increasingly resembles the realm of science fiction. From satellites which map our every movement to robots in the workplace, the stuff of fantasy is becoming reality. And beneath the surface of modern life, winds of change are coursing through every part of society, politics and beyond.

In uncertain times, how can the imagination give us access to other worlds which cast light back on our own? And what role can writers play in showing us better worlds to come?

At London Literature Festival this year, we gather together world-renowned writers, futurologists and transhumanists to face the fast-approaching future, and celebrate the power of the imagination to take us beyond our expectations as a species.

See more information and the program at the website.

Sunday 9 October 2016

Teju Cole

Home Strange Home

Hear provocative insights into literature, history and the most pressing issues of the present.

One of the world’s foremost writers and cultural observers, Teju Cole, reflects on the strange and known aspects of modern life. How do works of art, literature and familiar objects help provide a map for our lives, and are we increasingly becoming untethered from our every day realities? And what happens when home itself becomes surreal to us, in the face of a rapidly changing world?

Cole is a writer and a photographer, and his first two award-winning books, Open City and Every Day is For The Thief, gathered awards and announced him as one of the most perceptive and astute witnesses of our times.

Now in an exclusive London event drawing on a book of collected essays, Cole will be in conversation with Radio 3’s Philip Dodd on a range of subjects, delving into the literature of Baldwin, Walcott and Woolf, while turning his perception on pressing political realities from Boko Haram to Black Lives Matter.

The event promises to be a journey through the capacious sensibility and deft observations of one of our most perceptive literary minds.

St Paul’s Roof Pavilion at Royal Festival Hall

Sunday 9 October, 5pm – 6pm

More information at the website.

Saturday 15 October 2016

South African Sci-Fi

Lauren Beukes

The acclaimed author talks of what the present and future hold for women in this unique event.

Monsters take many forms in the novels of internationally renowned Lauren Beukes, from time-travelling serial killers to the unequal structures of the worlds that her heroines inhabit. Fusing dystopia and crime noir into rich psychological portraits, Beukes’ novels show us the surreal nature of modern times, from apartheid South Africa to the distant future.

Beukes’ books include Broken Monsters, which tells of a possessed killer in a town of repossessions; The Shining Girls, about a time-travelling serial killer and the survivor who turns the hunt around;Zoo City ‘an energetic phantasmagorical noir’ (The New York Times) which won the Arthur C Clarke Award and the Kitschies Red Tentacle and was long-listed for the IMPAC Award; and Moxyland, a dystopian corporate-apartheid political thriller.

Beukes is also the author of Maverick: Extraordinary Women From South Africa’s Past a non-fiction of short biographies of remarkable raconteurs, renegades and rebels.

In a rare London event, Beukes reads her fiction and talks about the relationship between the present and the future. Does fiction help us glimpse what comes next? What does the future hold for women and girls? And are we entering a different time-space-continuum of complexity?

Weston Roof Pavilion at Royal Festival Hall

More information at the website.