Philosophical Fiction Book Club

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

N.B.: this meeting will be held online via Google Meet There is also an in-person session being held on Wednesday in the Prince of Wales pub near Covent Garden.

Continuing our thematic year of 'Crisis of Values', The Vegetarian takes us to South Korea in the early 21st century with another Nobel Prize winner.

What happens when one's values diverge so starkly and viscerally from your family, friends and culture's? Can we find beauty in a world with so much violence? Can we find empathy, even when we can't understand the perspective of another? Let's explore these questions and others with the novel that brought Han Kang to global attention.

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from GoodReads:

Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.

Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

N.B. this meeting will be held in person in the Prince of Wales pub near Covent Garden. There is also an online session held on Thursday if you are not in London or are not able to attend in person for any other reason.

Continuing our thematic year of 'Crisis of Values', Play It As It Lays takes us to Hollywood in the 1960s with the celebrated writer and essayist, Joan Didion.

Glamour, gameplaying and nihilism in a heady and heavy portrayal of LA through the eyes of Maria after her probable mental break. Expect a cast of unpleasant characters and difficult themes told in clean prose, and possibly to confront the meaning of life (if there is any).

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from GoodReads:

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil - literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul - it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

N.B.: this meeting will be held online via Google Meet There is also an in-person session being held on Wednesday in the Prince of Wales pub near Covent Garden.

Continuing our thematic year of 'Crisis of Values', Play It As It Lays takes us to Hollywood in the 1960s with the celebrated writer and essayist, Joan Didion.

Glamour, gameplaying and nihilism in a heady and heavy portrayal of LA through the eyes of Maria after her probable mental break. Expect a cast of unpleasant characters and difficult themes told in clean prose, and possibly to confront the meaning of life (if there is any).

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from GoodReads:

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil - literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul - it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.