Launch of Ruth Rehmann's Illusions

Thursday 17 September · 18:30

Free of charge

To celebrate the publication of Ruth Rehmann’s Illusions in the Faber Editions line of rediscovered classics, translator Rob Madole and critic Alexander Wells will discuss the brilliant 1959 novel – "a lost classic that will shift perceptions of German literature in the English speaking world” in the words of Megan Nolan.

Welcome to the Wellis Corporation. Twenty-three storeys  of shimmering glass cubicles, rattling typewriters, spiraling corridors: a corporate kingdom with its own neon light. Over one weekend, we follow four employees into their private worlds. An ageing secretary; a translator in a mid-life-crisis; a once-glamorous typist; and a lovelorn trainee. Together, they reveal the illusions we live by – in the workplace, in the home and in our own mind’s eye. Lost for decades since it was first published in Germany in 1959, introduced by Megan Nolan and in a hypnotic new translation by Rob Madole, this crystalline debut novel by a pioneering female writer rewrites German literary history.  

Rob Madole is a writer and a translator in Berlin. His translation of Ruth Rehmann’s Illusions was published in the Faber Editions series in August 2026.

Carmen Maria Machado 

in conversation with Monika Radojevic

Thursday 8 October · 19:00

Tickets 6€

Come and join us for a very special evening with none other than Carmen Maria Machado! 

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, among others. Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, The Believer and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook and the Millay Colony for the Arts.

Carmen will be in conversation with Monika Radojevic, author of the novel Strangerland and the short story collection A Beautiful Lack of Consequence. Monika is also the host of the desirelines book club. 

Author photo: Jesse Dittmar.

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Sulaiman Addonia on The Seers

Thursday 12 November · 19:00

Tickets 6€

We are thrilled to welcome Sulaiman Addonia, author of one of this shop’s favourite books, bestsellers and book club picks – The Seers!

The Seers follows the first weeks of a homeless Eritrean refugee in London. Set around a foster home in Kilburn and in the squares of Bloomsbury, where its protagonist Hannah sleeps, the novel grapples with how agency is given to the sexual lives of refugees, presenting gender-fluid, trans and androgynous African immigrants, and insisting that the erotic and intimate side of life is as much a part of someone’s story as ‘land and nations’ are.  

Sulaiman Addonia is an Eritrean-Ethiopian-British writer and the author of two previous novels, The Consequences of Love and Silence is My Mother Tongue, as well as of The Seers. Sulaiman lives in Brussels, where he founded the Creative Writing Academy for Refugees & Asylum Seekers and the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival In Exile. In 2022 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.  

Sulaiman will be in conversation with Lubi Barre. Lubi is a writer and curator born in Paris and based in Hamburg. She is the founder of the independent reading series Sprachlos and FRAMED, as well as of Davenport Books, Hamburg's first English language cultural space and bookshop.

Author photo: Alexander Meeus.

Your ticket confirmation will be sent to you via email after purchase.
Buy your ticket HERE.