The Fitzcarraldo Editions Archive

To mark the re-publication of Edward Said’s The Question of Palestine, this landmark event held at the Royal Festival Hall on 20 November gathers eight key authors to reflect on the enduring legacy of Said’s work and its role in the ongoing Palestinian struggle for self-determination. Jehad Abusalim (via video), Tamim Barghouti, Budour Hassan, Saree Makdisi, Max Porter, Jacqueline Rose, Wadie Said, Avi Shlaim and Ahdaf Soueif, hosted by Aimee Shalan, consider what The Question of Palestine has become today, and the painful contradiction that Said himself would observe: that Palestinian gains in international moral and cultural standing since the book’s publication have done nothing to prevent the continuous losses of land and life; and that the establishment of Palestinian histories and narratives in the broader public imagination has led not to equality, but to dehumanisation and death on a scale previously unimaginable. Presented in cooperation with the Palestine Festival of Literature and the Southbank Centre. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.

Esther Kinsky in conversation with Gareth Evans: Esther Kinsky, author of River (tr. Iain Galbraith), Grove, Rombo and most recently Seeing Further (all tr. Caroline Schmidt), speaks with Gareth Evans, writer, editor and film/event producer. The discussion touches on the physicality of the writing process, telling a story without plot as the structuring principle, making the sensory presence of the world felt in language, and the personal and collective histories that words bear. Recorded at Young Space in September 2024. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.

Daisy Hildyard in conversation with Filipa Ramos: Daisy Hildyard, author of Hunters in the Snow, The Second Body and Emergency, which was awarded the 2023 RSL Encore Award, speaks to writer and curator Filipa Ramos about her work to date. The conversation touches on accommodating different forms of life – human, animal, plant – in writing, the ways in which stories come to live independently of their teller, relating experiences that happen outside of language, and humility in the face of our limited knowledge. Recorded at Young Space in July 2024. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.

Sheila Heti in conversation with Juliet Jacques: Sheila Heti, author of Alphabetical Diaries, Pure Colour, Motherhood and How Should A Person Be?, among other works, speaks to writer, journalist and filmmaker Juliet Jacques, whose published works include Monaco, Variations and Trans: A Memoir, about her writing to date. The discussion touches on revealing the hidden face of the self in writing, taking contemporary culture seriously as subject matter, the possibility of capturing ‘the spirit of the age’ in a time of fragmentation, and the unconscious processes that shape our lives. Recorded at Young Space in May 2024. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.

Jessica Au in conversation with Lucy Caldwell: Jessica Au, author of Cold Enough for Snow, winner of the 2020 Novel Prize, speaks to Lucy Caldwell, author of Intimacies and Openings, about the themes and ideas at work in her writing, including the dissonances between our external and internal worlds, the grief of growing apart from parental figures, the absences in the histories of migrant families, and the search for truth and commonality. Recorded at Young Space in April 2024. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.

Jacqueline Rose in conversation with Helen Charman: Feminist critic and writer Jacqueline Rose, author most recently of The Plague: Living Death in Our Times, published by Fitzcarraldo in 2023, speaks to critic and academic Helen Charman, author of Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood, publishing in August 2024. The conversation touches on South Africa's case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, the necessity of countenancing multiple and sometimes contradictory truths at once, and motherhood as a confrontation with life’s mess and fragility. Recorded at Young Space in January 2024. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.

Polly Barton in conversation with Rachael Allen: Polly Barton, author of Fifty Sounds and Porn: An Oral History, and translator of Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai, speaks to Rachael Allen, poet, editor and author of Kingdomland, about her work to date, including the importance of making spaces for ambivalence and not-knowing, difficult feelings as a source of writing, and her overlapping practices as writer and translator.

Antonia Lloyd-Jones in conversation with Daniel Hahn: Antonia Lloyd-Jones, translator of Polish literature including Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and Witold Gombrowicz’s The Possessed, speaks to Daniel Hahn, translator of Portuguese, Spanish and French literature and author of Catching Fire: A Translation Diary, about her work to date, including the reasons why she started learning Polish, the dynamism of the translator’s role and the necessity of producing a text that is ‘alive’ in translation. Recorded at Young Space in September 2023. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.

Kate Briggs in conversation with Jennifer Hodgson: Writer and translator Kate Briggs, author of This Little Art and The Long Form, speaks to Jennifer Hodgson, writer, critic and editor of Ann Quin’s The Unmapped Country, about her work, touching on the generative potential of translation, the possibilities and constraints of third-person narration and the novel as a collective production. Recorded at Young Space in April 2023. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.

Brian Dillon in conversation with Chris Power: Critic and essayist Brian Dillon, author of Essayism, In the Dark Room, Suppose a Sentence and Affinities, speaks to Chris Power, author of A Lonely Man, about his writing to date, including the influence and use of the image in his work, his attachment to the fragment and the ‘mere’, and the challenge of writing attentively about a specific thing, whether a sentence or an object. Recorded at Young Space in February 2023. Edited by Frankie Wells. Music composed by Kwes Darko.