Overview

Evie Wyld, Intan Paramaditha and Kathy Lette discuss ghosts, missing mothers, sibling rivalry, sharp comedy and sisters behaving very badly.

One sister becomes a suicide bomber. Two estranged twins are forced together when their mother disappears. And in another family, buried violence returns to haunt the living.

Three brilliantly different writers take us on a darkly funny journey through gothic unease, family secrets, sibling rivalry, betrayal and the histories we cannot escape. Can storytelling lay the ghosts to rest - or does every family remain haunted?

Moving between Australia, Indonesia, Britain and the United States, they explore the fierce and complicated bonds between mothers, daughters and sisters. Expect spirits, secrets, sex, shame and sharp comedy as three formidable storytellers reveal why the family remains such irresistible – and dangerous – territory.

Evie Wyld is a British-Australian novelist and the author of After the Fire, A Still Small Voice; All the Birds, Singing; The Bass Rock and The Echoes. Her psychologically acute, formally adventurous fiction explores violence, memory, family and landscape. Her honours include the Miles Franklin, the Stella Prize, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the European Union Prize for Literature.

Intan Paramaditha is an Australian-based Indonesian author, academic and Harvard Radcliffe Fellow whose fiction brings together gothic traditions, myth, feminism, politics and migration. Her story collection Apple and Knife appears in the Vintage Classics Weird Girls series, while her novel The Wandering was longlisted for the Stella Prize and received an English PEN Translates Award. Her new novel is the genre-defying feminist gothic Night of a Thousand Hells published by Europa on 8 October.

Kathy Lette first achieved succès de scandale as a teenager with Puberty Blues, which became both a major film and a television series. She has written 20 books, translated into 19 languages, and is also a broadcaster, columnist and performer celebrated for her sharp feminist wit. Her latest novel, The Sisterhood Rules, published by Bloomsbury under its Aria imprint, brings her unmistakable humour to estranged twins, sibling warfare, sex, ageing and family secrets.

Venue: Level 6 Auditorium, Foyles, 107 Charing Cross Road WC2H 0DT*

*Please note that the Level 6 Auditorium is fully accessible from the Ground floor lifts.

Intan Paramaditha is an award-winning Indonesian novelist, short-story writer, and scholar. Her story collection Apple and Knife is part of the Vintage Classics Weird Girls series, and her novel The Wandering was longlisted for the Stella Prize and received the English PEN Translates Award. She holds a Ph.D. from New York University and teaches at Macquarie University, Sydney. She is co-founder of the feminist collective Sekolah Pemikiran Perempuan.

We are delighted to be hosting Intan for her latest novel, A Night of a Thousand Hells, a haunting story subversively blending Islamic mysticism, horror, and political reckoning, all seen through the ghostly lens of Indonesian folklore and occult traditions.

THREE SISTERS. A CARETAKER, A TRAVELLER, AND A BRIDE.

Mutiara and Maya's lives are irrevocably altered when their younger sister Annisa straps a bomb to her waist and commits a devastating act.

As they grapple with grief, guilt, and unanswered questions, their search leads them to long-concealed secrets, forsaken family bonds, and the unsettling prophecies of their grandmother, whose enigmatic wisdom has shaped the destinies of women across generations.