The Man Booker at Birkbeck
Birkbeck and the Booker Prize Foundation are collaborating on an exciting initiative to bring together students from all disciplines to discuss outstanding contemporary literary fiction.
Professor Russell Celyn Jones in conversation with Sarah Waters
This November, Birkbeck and the Booker Prize Foundation – which is responsible for the award of the Man Booker Prize, the leading literary award in the English speaking world – are collaborating on an exciting initiative to bring together students from all disciplines to discuss outstanding contemporary literary fiction.
Acclaimed novelist Sarah Waters will be joining Russell Celyn Jones, Professor of Creative Writing, in an evening at Birkbeck to discuss her latest novel, The Little Stranger, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize. Sarah Waters is well known for her novels Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and Fingersmith, all set in Victorian London, and the wartime/post war novel The Night Watch, which was recently adapted by the BBC. Russell Celyn Jones is himself an award-winning novelist and was a Man Booker judge in 2002 when Waters' novel Fingersmith was shortlisted.
The Little Stranger - free book and a good read
In The Little Stranger, Waters has said she wanted to explore the idea of spectres as ‘manifestations of psychic distress’ while being influenced by the best of the haunted house genre, such as The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. The novel’s setting in postwar Britain, with its tensions of class constraint and austerity, make it a rich source for discussion. The audience can look forward to an insightful and entertaining evening learning more about the author’s ideas behind the novel.
Free copies of The Little Stranger will be made available to new students (first come, first served) at the beginning of term, encouraging them to read the book before attending the Man Booker at Birkbeck event on Monday November 14.
Find out more details about the event, and how to book.
Find out more about creative writing and other courses at Birkbeck.
[Photograph of the author, copyright Charlie Hopkinson]