Fill 2018: Long Live The European Novel

(This is a past event and is no longer running)

The old good European novel used to be full of cosmopolitan and experimental characters, obsessed with Mitteleuropa and exile. Things have changed quite a bit, so what’s the European novel in the age of Brexit and deaths at sea in the Mediterranean? In this extraordinary panel discussion, two major award-winning writers discuss how the tradition of the European novel can still try to establish a new canon in the face of political turmoil, investigating the bleeding edges of Europe and switching the focus onto neglected geographies and voices.

Speakers:
Nicola Lagioia is one of Italy’s most critically acclaimed contemporary novelists, a contributor to the most prominent Italian culture pages, and the programme director of the Turin International Book Fair. His novel Ferocity (published in English by Europa Editions) won the Strega Prize in 2015.

Mathias Énard won the 2015 Prix Goncourt for his novel Compass, the 2017 Leipziger Book Award for European Understanding, and was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. His books are published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo. His new book Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants, will be published in English in November 2018.

Chair
Catherine Taylor is the former deputy director of English PEN, and a literary critic and editor currently contributing to Guardian Review, New Statesman, FT Life & Arts, the TLS and the Irish Times.