Read with Ukraine this May
News of our next walks and catching up on April's Things Fall Apart
Dear walking book clubbers,
Here we are on Hampstead Heath last Sunday, for our kola-nut-powered Things Fall Apart walk. It was great to see so many of you there, and on Zoom the following evening, to share this landmark work of literature - thanks for coming - and thanks also to those of you who’ve emailed me your thoughts on this powerful book. For anyone who would like to track down more Nigerian kola nuts, I recommend a wander along Dalston’s Ridley Road market.
And welcome to the many of you who have recently signed up after hearing about us on Backlisted - lovely to have you here! I hope you can find everything you need on this substack - have a scroll through recent posts - but please do drop me a line if you’ve any questions. Looking forward to meeting you on a walk or a Zoom soon.
Catching up on Things Fall Apart
We loved Chinua Achebe’s classic novel Things Fall Apart, and thought it was such an important book to have read. We felt that a great deal of its power lay in Achebe’s skilful pairing of a richly detailed setting that’s totally new to most readers with the all-too-familiar character traits of Okonkwo. It is such an uncanny and powerful dichotomy, which you can see right from the start. In this month’s webcast, I read out the opening part of the book to show exactly what I mean.
We also talked about the wonderful expansiveness of the English language, and about the missionaries and colonialism. Many thanks to Shannon for sharing the Desmond Tutu quotation, which is so very apt:
When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said: “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
I hope you enjoy the latest webcast - feel free to leave me a comment and join the discussion. You can find webcasts for all of our books since the pandemic on my YouTube channel: Emily Rhodes Writer.
*** This newsletter will always be free for those who need it to be, but if you are able to help keep the show on the road / on the Heath, and support Emily’s walking book club by paying a small annual subscription of £20/year, then please do. Alternatively, you can pay £50/year to include a bespoke literary consultation with me. Drop me a line for more info. ***
May: Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov translated by George Bird
Ukraine fundraiser: All money from ticket sales will go to the DEC humanitarian appeal.
Lovely to see so many of you booking in for May already, with three chances to discuss this ingenious, darkly comic Ukrainian novel about a writer and his pet penguin in 1990s Kyiv.
#readwithukraine
Daunt Books Festival Walk
Friday 20th May, 10-11.30am, setting off from Daunt Books Marylebone, 83-84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW.
The Daunt Books Festival looks brilliant. Full details HERE. While you can of course buy a ticket just for the walk, you might like to snap up one of the Festival Passes and enjoy the other events on Thursday and Friday. On the Friday alone, Matt Green is after me talking about his haunting history of Britain’s lost places, Shadowlands, and that evening features Nina Stibbe and ALI SMITH!!
Hampstead Heath Walk
Sunday 22nd May, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB:
Zoom Discussion
Monday 23rd May 8-8.40pm:
Buy Death and the Penguin from Daunt Books and receive 10% off using the code WBC at checkout, or just tell them you’re in the group if you’re buying it in the shop.
Looking ahead
Here are our next three books at a glance:
You can find full details of our June and July walks, including links to book tickets, on THIS PREVIOUS NEWSLETTER.
Look out for more about Andrey Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin in our next newsletter. In the meantime, happy reading and stay in touch - I always love hearing your book news.
Emily