Thursday 15th January
6.30-8.30pm
Please join us to celebrate the publication of Telegraphy and hear Farah Ali in conversation with Lara Pawson, author of the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted Spent Light.
‘A true book of the body, its pains and resonances, and a bold, unique structure with a captivating voice.’ – Han Smith
Growing up in Pakistan, Annie experiences the death of her mother, goes to college in Karachi, falls in love with a singer in a band, marries the wrong man, and all her life has visions and illnesses no doctor can explain.
Signals are received from across time and space. Passages interwoven with Annie’s narrative include Vesalius stealing the corpse of a hanged man, a visit to the house of the 17th-century Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch, correspondence between far-flung friends in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, a family’s centuries-long dispersal following an earthquake in Kibyra in 23 CEe, and a man stepping onto a landmine in contemporary Waziristan.
‘The ethereal quality of Farah Ali’s writing holds this curious, clever, almost devious book with such tenderness, I felt I was in the hands of a writer who had been working for decades to distil this fine work.’ – Lara Pawson
Farah Ali is a writer and translator from Pakistan. Her books include the short-story collection People Want to Live and the novel The River, The Town. She is the co-founder of Lakeer, a digital space for writing and art from Pakistan.