About this Event
Join us with Mariusz Szczygiel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones, to discuss Mariusz's collection of essays Not There. Mariusz and Antonia will be in conversation with Robin Ashenden.
Not There, is a collection of essays and reportage exploring loss, grief, absence and, ultimately, acceptance and even joy. Mariusz Szczygieł takes as inspiration his conversations with a wide range of people, from a Czech poet, a Ukrainian soldier, a retired Polish accountant, a Hungarian antique shop owner, and an Albanian painter, to the author’s own elderly father. Szczygieł begins these interviews with a discussion of the idea of absence and the way humans face it, but the conversations expand and meander in fascinating and unusual directions. Written in a beautiful, associative style reminiscent of W.G. Sebald, Not There considers the instability of memory and how our idea of the truth might be a very personal one. Mariusz Szczygiel is one of the best-known members of the Polish school of reportage, associated with Ryszard Kapuściński and Hanna Krall. In Not There, he memorably examines the human condition, its inevitably tragic absences and its enduring happiness.
Mariusz Szczygiel is one of Europe’s most celebrated journalists. A reporter for Gazeta Wyborcza, he is the author of a number of books of reportage about the Czech Republic and Poland. His books are published in 21 countries and have been awarded the Europe Book Prize and the Prix Amphi, among other honours. From 1995–2001, he hosted a popular talk show on Polish television. Szczygieł runs the Institute of Reportage in Warsaw, a creative writing reportage school, and Dowody na Istnienie, an independent publishing house.Antonia Lloyd-Jones translates fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s books from Polish. Her translation of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by 2018 Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk was shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. For ten years she was a mentor for the National Centre for Writing’s Emerging Translator Mentorship programme, and is a former co-chair of the UK Translators Association.Robin Ashenden was founder and editor of the Central and Eastern European London Review, a site which ran from 2014-2018 covering CEE cultural events in London. He has a Master’s degree on travel-writing about the communist world and, following several decades of living and working in Russia and Eastern Europe, has written regularly about the region, as a freelance journalist, for publications like Spectator, the Critic and Quillette.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Waterstones, 11 Islington Green, London, United Kingdom
GBP 5.00 to GBP 15.00
