F E S T I VA L B O O KS | Hitlist BOOKS HITLIST
Lynsey May picks the best events from the first week of the Edinburgh International Book Festival
FATIMA BHUTTO Returning to the book festival to talk about her second novel, The Runaways, Fatima Bhutto will chat about a powerful story which examines the way inequality breeds anger and the reasons marginalised people are targeted and recruited into terrorism. Charlotte Square Gardens 10 Aug, 10.15am, £12 (£10).
KIT DE WAAL WITH DAMIAN BARR
The publishing world is waking up to the fact it’s been stifling working class voices. Among those leading the charge is Kit de Waal, who’ll be discussing Common People, her collection of essays by working class writers, with Damian Barr who is also included in the book. Charlotte Square Gardens, 10 Aug, 5.45pm, £8 (£6).
NIALL CAMPBELL & ROSEANNE
WATT Two rising stars in Scottish poetry will be twinkling in Charlotte Square
Gardens this year as Roseanne Watt, winner of the 2018 Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize, and Niall Campbell, who won the same in 2014, chat about their recent collections. Charlotte Square Gardens, 11 Aug, 6.30pm, £8 (£6).
CAN XUE With a Booker International Prize longlisting for Love in the New Millennium, one of China’s most important modern writers is about to gain a new generation of readers. Hear Deng Xiaohua – who works under pen name Can Xue – in conversation with literary critic Boyd Tonkin. Charlotte Square Gardens, 12 Aug, 5.45pm, £12 (£10).
NATHAN FILER & HELEN THOMSON
In an event focusing on the power – and tragedy – of the mind, Nathan Filer, who won Costa Book of the Year for The Shock of the Fall, and Helen Thomson, former editor of New Scientist and author of Unthinkable, will discuss schizophrenia and rare brain disorders. Spark Theatre, George Street, 13 Aug, 12.15pm, £12 (£10).
Kit de Waal
CHIGOZIE OBIOMA & NAMWALI SERPELL
Discover some dazzling and ambitious fiction. An Orchestra of Minorities is Obioma’s Nigeria-set follow-up
to Booker-shortlisted debut The Fishermen, while Serpell’s debut novel The Old Drift is set mostly in Zambia. Charlotte Square Gardens, 14 Aug, 7.30pm, £12 (£10).
38 THE LIST FESTIVAL 7–14 Aug 2019