Nottingham’s independent bookshop | 14a Long Row, Nottingham NG1 2DH | 0115 8373097
A book-length prose text/speculative verse novel from writer and translator Jen Calleja; an exploration of xenophobia, cultural exploitation, historical suppression and the politics of literary translation. In a time when looking into the past has become a socially unacceptable and illegal act in the Nation, a group of scholars are offered an attractive residency to allow them to pursue their projects. When the residency transpires to be a devastating trick, these Researchers go on the run, and soon discover that their projects all relate to one major event: the Isletese Disaster – the decline and subsequent devastation fifty years earlier of a long-forgotten roaming archipelago called The Islets. One figure emerges as central to all of their work: Hester Heller, a reformed cult musiker turned student recruited from the Institute for Transmission as an agent of the state and tasked with gathering reconnaissance on the Disaster by using her old band Vehicle as a cover. Heller is the key to the Researchers collective story, which they try to piece together while evading their pursuers. Compiled from the Researchers’ disparate documentation, recollections, and even their imaginations…
Jen Calleja has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize as a literary translator from German into English and was the inaugural Translator in Residence at the British Library. She played and toured in the DIY punk bands Sauna Youth, Feature, Monotony, Gold Foil and Mind Jail spanning a period of over a decade as both a drummer and a vocalist.
Free, refreshments provided. We don’t mind where you source the book – libraries are good! – be we offer 15% discount on book group titles.
Bookings are closed for this event.
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Five Leaves Bookshop
14a Long Row
Nottingham
NG1 2DH
0115 8373097