London Literature Festival begins with a line-up of debut writers, including Kaliane Bradley, Hannah Regel, Tom Lamont and Varaidzo, chaired by Barry Pierce.
All of these debut novels are set, at least in part, in London. They take us to pubs, playgrounds, art galleries, dusty libraries, jazz clubs, cramped bedrooms and beyond.
A hauntingly charismatic novel about friendship, art, and womanhood, Hannah Regel’s The Last Sane Woman is a compulsive and uncanny debut that explores what it means to fail – and asks if success is ever truly possible.
Travelling between London and Bath, the glamour and turmoil of the 1930s and the Olympics excitement of 2012, Manny and the Baby by Varaidzo is a character-driven debut novel, full of heart, about what it means to be Black and British, now and in the past.
Set in the Jewish community in Enfield, North London, Tom Lamont’s Going Home is a lyrical and charming debut novel that explores fatherhood, friendship, freedom and community through the eyes of two-year-old Joel Woods.
Set in the near future, and following a mysterious new government ministry tasked with gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time-travel, Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time is a razor-sharp debut about the time, betrayal, and the histories that shape us.
Hannah Regel was born in Nottingham and now lives in London. From 2012 – 2019 she
was the co-editor of the feminist art journal SALT. She has two published collections of poetry, When I Was Alive and Oliver Reed.
Tom Lamont is an award-winning journalist. In 2015, he became one of the founding writers on the Guardian’s Long Read desk and since 2017 he has been a regular correspondent for American GQ. Going Home is his first novel.
Varaidzo is a writer and artist. Her short story ‘Bus Stop’ was shortlisted for the 4thWrite Prize 2018. She is a contributor to the best-selling anthology The Good Immigrant and the romance anthology Who’s Loving You. She was previously the Digital Editor at Wasafiri, and the Arts & Culture Editor at gal-dem.
Kaliane Bradley is a British-Cambodian writer and editor based in London. Her short stories have appeared in Electric Literature, Catapult, Somesuch Stories and The Willowherb Review, among others. She was the winner of the 2022 Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize and the 2022 V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize. The Ministry of Time is her first novel.