An Evening with Ben Okri - Hatchards, Piccadilly

We are thrilled to welcome Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet and playwright Ben Okri here at Hatchards to celebrate the publication of his new novel

Madame Sosostris & the Festival for the Broken-Hearted

Ben will be in conversation with author and journalist Claire Armitstead.

What do you do when your heart has been made a wasteland by love? Viv had the idea for the festival on the twentieth anniversary of the day her first husband left her. Six months later, crowds descend on the grounds of a dreamlike château in the South of France, avidly awaiting the experience of a lifetime, Viv’s inaugural Festival for the Broken-Hearted. Everyone is in fancy dress. No one knows who anyone is. They wander the beautiful woods with just one night to change everything. And to crown it all, a very special guest is expected: world-renowned clairvoyant and fortune-teller Madame Sosostris, known as the wisest woman in Europe, and not seen since the pages of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. She will attend for one night only.But will she actually appear at all, or will Viv’s carefully orchestrated festival fall to pieces? Will Viv and her husband make it through the night? Will anyone else?

As we will discover, Madame Sosostris & the Festival for the Broken-Hearted is part vision, part mystery. It’s the story of a midsummer night’s madness; an homage to Eliot's famous poem and, in Ben Okri’s inimitable style, alive with echoes and reverberations as the enchanted forest itself. Think Ingmar Bergman meets William Shakespeare, with a dash of Mozart!

Host or Publisher Waterstones