17 Apr Frontier Fiction featuring Tim Winton
Friday 29th June: 19.30
Tim Winton, Carys Davies and Paul Howarth
Fiction can take us to the edge of the world and back. To conclude this year’s festival, we are delighted to welcome international bestselling Booker-shortlisted author Tim Winton, on a rare visit to the UK from his native Australia, alongside two brilliant new novelists telling stories from the fringes.
Tim’s new book The Shepherd’s Hut is an exquisite, brutal coming of age novel. It tells the story of Jaxie, a boy on the run from his past, and explores the way love and hate combine to form a young man’s beliefs. There’s just one person in the world who understands Jaxie, but to reach her he’ll have to cross the vast saltlands of Western Australia. It is a place that harbours criminals and threatens to kill those who haven’t reckoned with its hot, waterless vastness. This is a journey only a dreamer – or a fugitive – would attempt.
Tim will be joined by Paul Howarth, whose debut novel Only Killers and Thieves takes us back in time to the searing outback of 1880s Queensland, as the setting of a powerfully told, gripping story of family, guilt, empire, and race. And also by Carys Davies, whose latest novel West transports us to the other side of the globe, frontier America of 1815, where a widower called Cy Bellman is heading into the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River…
This promises to be an extraordinary evening showcasing fiction’s ability to transport us across time and space.
Venue: The Ballroom, Balham Bowls Club
Price: £15 or £25 including a copy of The Shepherd’s Hut