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Matthew D’Ancona
Nothing to Fear
Elleke Boehmer, Ben Okri
and Helen Oyeyemi
Chaired by
Helene Neveu Kringelbach
844
6pm / Festival Room 2, Christ Church / £7.50
For Ginny, the new house represents a new start: a room
of her own where she can research her book on the
psychology of fairytales and recover from a bitter divorce.
The last thing she is looking for is romance. But her
young neighbour breaks down her defences. Sean
cooks her delicious meals and rescues her from a
drunken attack by her ex-husband. His only eccentricity
is the locked room in his house that he forbids her to
enter. It can’t contain anything sinister, can it Ginny
can’t resist finding out. But when she opens the door,
she is propelled into a horror story, rather than a
fairytale. Find out more in the new novel by Matthew
d’Ancona, editor of The Spectator and a columnist for
The Sunday Telegraph.
Common Tales
845
6pm / Blue Boar Marquee, Christ Church /£7.50
Is there anything ‘African’ about African literature
How does the experience of living outside the continent
affect the writing of African authors The themes of
myth, memory and spirit often occur in African novels
and yet they also tell universal stories. Discussing
these themes and stories are Elleke Boehmer, author
of Nile Baby, an imaginatively daring story testing
the boundaries between the living and the dead and
between the ‘other’ and ourselves; Ben Okri, whose
latest story collection, Tales of Freedom, offers a
different, poetic way of looking at our extreme, gritty
world; and Helen Oyeyemi, author of The Icarus Girl and
now Pie-Kah, a mesmerizing gothic tale of a haunted
family that deals with grief, illness and alienation. Chaired
by Helene Neveu Kringelbach, and Lecturer in African
Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
Joanne Harris 838
The English Speaking
Union Lecture
6pm / Garden Marquee, Christ Church / £8.00
With branches in over 50 countries around the
world, The English Speaking Union (founded in
1918) promotes global understanding through
the use of the English language. At the heart
of the ESU’s work is the role of English in
literature, in the arts and in music – as well as
public speaking, discussion and debate.
The second ESU Lecture will be delivered by
Joanne Harris. Joanne was born in Barnsley
of a French mother and an English father. Her
novels, including Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters
of the Orange, Runemarks and The Lollipop
Shoes, are published in over 40 countries.
Joanne won the hearts of millions of readers
with her bestselling novel Chocolat (inspired
by the stories told by her French mother),
which was made into an Oscar-nominated film
starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp.
In association with The English Speaking Union
SUNDAY APRIL 2009
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