Stories From The South: A Public Book Club

Booklovers are invited to join a new in-person discussion book club featuring a series of brilliant literary works that have emerged from what Adelaide’s resident Nobel Prize winner, J.M. Coetzee, describes as the “unique world” of the South.  Each session will feature guest speakers who will facilitate group discussions as we read and respond to works by Nobel Prize-winners Coetzee and Abdulrazak Gurnah, First Nations Australian writers Kim Scott and Alexis Wright, Māori author Patricia Grace and the Marshall Islands climate activist and poet Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner.

This free book club is hosted jointly by Dymocks, InDaily and writers and thinkers from the University of Adelaide. Participants will have the opportunity to enhance their engagement through Reading Guides in InReview and will also be able to add to discussions via the Stories from the South Facebook group.

Stories from the South Book Club will meet at Dymocks Bookstore Rundle Mall on the last Tuesday of each month from 6.30-7.30pm from September 2023 to April 2024, with a break over December and January. Places are limited, so make sure to register as soon as possible.

This month we read By the Sea (2001), the sixth novel by 2021 Nobel Laureate for Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah. By the Sea traces the entwined lives of Saleh Omar, a refugee from Zanzibar seeking political asylum in Britain, and Latif Mahmud, another Tanzanian exile. Both are living under assumed identities, and their eventual encounter re-awakens traumatic memories of the past. The novel is a lyrical exploration of the nature of memory and the fragmented identities of those exiled from home. Discussion at our in-person meeting will be facilitated by scholars Kai Easton, David Osu Ishaya and Morgan Nunan.

WHEN: Tuesday 30 April 2024, 6:00pm - 7:30pm

WHERE: Dymocks Adelaide (Regent Theatre, Rundle Mall) 

Register