Esi Edugyan

This event has been cancelled as the speaker can no longer attend. Full refunds will be issued by the box office.

Acclaimed novelist Esi Edugyan talks about her new novel Washington Black, which was recently shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker prize. Ticketholders for this event are invited to a festival drinks party in the Bear Hotel sponsored by the Bear Hotel at 6.15pm on the evening of this event.

The novel switches from the brutal cane plantations of Barbados to the Canadian Arctic, the muddy streets of London and the deserts of Morocco. Washington Black, an 11-year-old slave, is selected as personal servant to the eccentric Christopher ‘Titch’ Wilde, one of two brothers at the helm of the plantation. They escape the plantation together but Titch disappears, leaving Washington alone to pursue a promise of freedom.

Edugyan is based in Victoria, British Columbia. Her first novel, Half Blood Blues, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Governor-General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize, and the Orange Prize.

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