In award-winning writer Tahmima Anam‘s bold and bracing new novel Uprising, an island community of women enslaved on the Bengal Delta are afforded new compass points when the arrival of the resilient Kusum Khan encourages collective resistance through direct action and the shared bonds of sisterhood.

In The Sleep Thief – translated from Arabic to English for the first time by Sinan Antoon – International Booker Prize-longlisted Palestinian author Ibtisam Azem explores how protest informs her protagonist Haifawi’s coming-of age story: a site where friendships and sexualities are explored, and where citizens refuse to be made strangers in their own homes.

Bringing together two astonishing voices in world fiction, we ask you to join us in fearlessly examining the present nature of personal and public protest, human rights and resistance – and to consider what it means to write and dream with freedom.

This event is presented in partnership with Wasafiri magazine and is chaired by its Editor, Sana Goyal.