Helon Habila, Damon Galgut, and Vicente Molina Foix

The work of many writers is shaped by their homeland – the history, the politics, the myths and the collective memories. To what degree does national identity inform a writer’s narrative style and thematic resource? Or is the very notion of a ‘national writing’ too narrow a definition in the global cultural landscape?

Hot on the heels of his multi-award-winning debut Waiting for an Angel comes Helon Habila’s epic second novel. Set during the early years of Nigerian independence, Measuring Time plots the fragile lives of its protagonists against the seismic political shifts of the African continent.

Damon Galgut’s Booker-shortlisted fourth novel The Good Doctor confirmed his status as the rightful heir to J.M. Coetzee’s literary crown, exposing and exploding the inherent incongruities of the new South Africa. His latest novel – The Impostor – evokes a cruel and claustrophobic world of fantasy and memory.

Novelist, playwright and filmmaker Vicente Molina Foix won Spain’s National Fiction Prize 2007 for his latest novel El abrecartas. Spanning a century of Spanish history, politics and literature, its epistolary narrative takes the form of imagined correspondence between fictional and historical characters from Federico Garcia Lorca to Vicente Aleixandre.