Join us for an evening with author Ben Pester to discuss his Goldsmiths Prize and Nero Award shortlisted debut novel, The Expansion Project, an unnerving, surreal, and impressively familiar yet uncanny meditation on the pressures, isolation, anxiety, and dislocation of the modern workplace.

Plans for the expansion of the Capmeadow Business Park are in full swing—its mission is to become the greatest business park in the region.

Tom Crowley, a mid-level employee, loses his daughter at ‘bring your daughter to work day’. He raises the alarm, and his colleagues rush to help him find her. Eventually, after no sign of her is found, it transpires she was never there. And yet, as time goes on, Tom still cannot reconcile that she is really at home.

Refusing to accept that she is safe, Tom continues to search for her in the maze of corridors and impossible multi-dimensional spaces that make up his place of work…

Years pass, and Tom remains at the company, convinced he is in the presence of his now adult daughter. But has he judged it correctly? And can anything go back to the way it was?

To celebrate the publication of his debut novel, Ben will be in conversation with writer Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou about the literary influences behind The Expansion Project, how short and longer form fiction diverge and converge on the page, and why the surreal and absurd are essential to exploring the constraints of modern life, work, and literature.