11 August, 6.30pm
Edinburgh International Book Festival
Writer’s Retreat
Book Festival Village
5A Charlotte Square
Tickets £6 - £8 (on sale from 26 June)
This event brings together two writers impacted by the Soviet era, Poland’s Jacek Dehnel and Estonia’s Andrei Ivanov. Dehnel’s ‘Lala’ is a loosely autobiographical family saga, stretching from Kiev in 1875 to today’s Poland, telling the major historical events of the 20th century through the stories the captivating Lala tells her grandson. It is an intimate and personal novel, and captures both the intricacies of human relationships and the sweep of world history. Ivanov’s ‘Hanuman’s Travels’, to be published in October, is also based on the author’s personal experiences, as he tells the stories of two asylum seekers, the Russian-Estonian narrator and the Indian protagonist, as they negotiate their daily lives in a Danish refugee camp and then on the road.