Join Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted author Helen Oyeyemi to celebrate the release of her glorious new novel, Parasol Against the Axe, which will take you on a once-in-a-lifetime trip suffused with warmth and joy.

Hero Tojosoa accepts an invitation she was half expected to decline, and finds herself in Prague on a bachelorette weekend hosted by her estranged friend Sofie. Little does she know she’s arrived in a city with a penchant for playing tricks on the unsuspecting.

An adventurous, kaleidoscopic novel, Parasol Against the Axe considers the lines between illusion and delusion, fact and interpretation, and weighs the risks of attaching too firmly to the stories of a place, or a person, or a shared history.

This exclusive virtual event, in conversation with literary journalist and TV critic Suzi Feay, promises to be as impressive and vast as Oyeyemi’s imagination, that will reward you with moments of philosophical clarity and raw emotion.

“A shape-shifting novel about the power of stories… Oyeyemi is a literary pied piper — her voice is the kind that readers gamely follow into the most bewildering and unnerving of situations.” The New York Times