Renowned authors Caryl Phillips and Elleke Boehmer read from their new novels, and discuss how they evoked troubled childhoods, race, the buried, unspoken violence of history.

Phillips’ The Lost Child (‘complex and compelling’ Independent) investigates Northern England’s slavery connections, reimagining the figure of Heathcliff.

Boehmer’s sixth novel, The Shouting in the Dark, described by J.M. Coetzee as ‘disturbing as it is enthralling,’ tells of a girl’s struggle against her father’s oppression while searching for a secure footing amidst the moral chaos of apartheid South Africa.

This event will be chaired by celebrated Leicestershire-based poet, editor and psychotherapist Mahendra Solanki.