Alys Conran's guest appearances

Alys Conran

The Essay

Orion Books

GLADcast

Jane Eyre

Seamus Heaney

Paul Robeson

Jenny Lewis

Will Harris

Elif Shafak

Afua Hirsch

Colm Tóibín

Salman Rushdie

Michael Morpurgo

Ian Rankin

Robert Frost

George Eliot

Katharine Hepburn

Elizabeth Bishop

OwlTail

Alys Conran reflects on the theme of isolation in Robinson Crusoe and the act of reading it as a novelist In this series of Essays, recorded in front of an audience at the 2019 Hay Festival, five writers respond to the themes of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Often described as the first novel, it's a story which still resonates, three hundred years after it was written, but also preserves the attitudes of its time. Fiona Stafford, Horatio Clare, Alex Wheatle, Alys Conran and Daniel Hahn reflect on the novel as a tale of exotic adventure, a study of isolation and a fantasy of colonial encounter.

Alys Conran reflects on the theme of isolation in Robinson Crusoe and the act of reading it as a novelist <br><br>In this series of Essays, recorded in front of an audience at the 2019 Hay Festival, five writers respond to the themes of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Often described as the first novel, it's a story which still resonates, three hundred years after it was written, but also preserves the attitudes of its time. Fiona Stafford, Horatio Clare, Alex Wheatle, Alys Conran and Daniel Hahn reflect on the novel as a tale of exotic adventure, a study of isolation and a fantasy of colonial encounter.

Alys Conran is one of Britain’s most exciting new writers. Her first novel, Pigeon, was praised for its humanity and skill: ‘might have been authored by Faulkner’, one critic wrote. Appropriately enough for a festival called Hearth, Alys’s second novel Dignity (forthcoming in 2019) is all about the places we call home. It tells the story of three women: sharp-tonged Magda, her carer Shusheela, and the memories of Magda’s mother Evelyn, a former teacher. Magda spent her childhood in the British Raj, a place that ground down her mother and left a lasting legacy on all three women. Dignity considers what the Raj means to Britain today.

Alys Conran - Dignity