Edinburgh International Book Festival 2019 Highlights 24–26 August

Francis Spufford: Lives They May Have Led The opening chapter of Francis Spufford’s new novel Light Perpetual will leave an indelible mark on the imagination of anyone who reads it. Over just a few pages, Spufford smashes time to smithereens, parcelling it into a stop-motion sequence of… Mara Menzies: A Story of Identity Perhaps because it is such a natural human impulse, storytelling has sometimes been overlooked as an art form. Yet we are content to take it for granted as a building block for films, plays and the written word. Mara Menzies is a performance storyteller w… Should Capitalism Survive Climate Change? As COVID-19 has spread, the varying responses from the world’s governments has demonstrated catastrophic disparity and underpreparedness. In the push for growth and the prioritisation of short-term economic gain, the most vulnerable communities have bee… James Naughtie: The USA, from Reagan to Trump Over the years that James Naughtie has been reporting on world politics, the USA has undergone seismic changes. Naughtie first visited the States in 1970 as a student, when the Vietnam War was raging and Richard Nixon was in the Oval Office. Since then, N… Chan Koonchung (2011 event) Is it possible to live in China today, and to raise an eyebrow about the country’s political ambitions? Chan Koonchung does precisely that… Charlie Adlard and Robbie Morrison (2014 event) Dream team Charlie Adlard and Robbie Morrison came to Edinburgh to talk about White Death, a frank graphic novel account of two dead bodies discovered almost 100 years on, and highlighting how snow was used as a military weapon. In this event, filmed live… Tobias Kelly & Charlotte McDonald-Gibson: Radical Outsiders How much is your life shaped by your conscience? Journalist Charlotte McDonald- Gibson and academic Tobias Kelly ask us to imagine having views that set us apart. Kelly’s new book, Battles of Conscience, traces the histories of five beleaguered conscien… Bryan & Mary Talbot (2013 event) Bryan and Mary Talbot talk about their award-winning work which brought the graphic novel form to mainstream attention… This Separated Isle: State of the Union Before the pandemic made a seismic impact across the world, things were already shifting here in the UK: the divide exposed by Brexit, the Hostile Environment policy and rising levels of hate crimes revealed bitter divisions in British society and politic… Mieko Kawakami: Three Daughters of Osaka While this year’s release of Breasts and Eggs marks the first time Mieko Kawakami has been translated into English (by Sam Bett and David Boyd), she has been a literary sensation in Japan for more than ten years. Her legions of fans include Haruki Murak…