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Hundreds of events for adults, teenagers and children feature authors, illustrators, musicians, poets, policians, thinkers, prize-winners and rising stars every August.
Imagine trying to escape from Auschwitz as a teenager, hiding for three days, while 3,000 SS and their bloodhounds search for you. This is the story of Rudolf Vrba, whose report on the atrocity of Auschwitz reached Roosevelt, Churchill and the Pope,...
Mohsin Hamid joins us on our opening day to discuss The Last White Man. This blistering novel sees Anders, a white man, wake up to find he has turned a ‘deep and undeniable brown’, with clear echoes of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Hamid’s previous...
To write on sex, consent and desire after the cultural shifts of the last decade is not easy – but this event brings together two writers who have penned unflinching books on these topics. The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan and Tomorrow Sex Will Be...
In Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet, readers were treated to something rarely seen since Dickens: novels engaging with events as they unfolded – including Brexit, migration and climate change. With Companion Piece, Smith takes another bracing dive into...
Covid-19 brought about the biggest crisis since the Second World War. It required government interventions so huge that the result was effectively a revolution. That’s the crux of Adam Tooze’s argument in Shutdown, his trenchant analysis of how...
Since Scotland’s independence referendum and Brexit, the United Kingdom has felt far from united. Into this context, former editor of the Times Sir Simon Jenkins offers a timely analysis of Celtic identity, from its mysterious origins to its...
Three authors are brought together to reimagine resistance. Sequoia Nagamatsu’s debut How High We Go in the Dark shows us a world changed by plague – and humanity’s unending will to survive. The Cuckoo Cage, which Courttia Newland contributed to,...
Throughout history, liberal democracy has been placed at risk when groups either dominate a society or become increasingly divided. In a multicultural world, how do we build common ground? Academic Yascha Mounk is known for critical thinking on the rise...
Since the death of Chairman Mao in 1976, China has radically reformed. But the result has been uneven, creating real economic growth and global political influence, but also reinforcing the one-party state’s grip over its vast population. Launching...
Booker-Prize finalist NoViolet Bulawayo joins us to discuss the ruthlessness of absolute power and the hope that underpins resistance. In her razor-sharp Glory, a long-serving leader falls and a country implodes. Bearing witness to the chaos, a goat...
The line-up for the 2022 Book Festival is revealed 
