“A dreamer is one who can find his way only by moonlight and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” Oscar Wilde

The thing about the end of the world is that it happens all the time. Two exciting, energetic debuts explore the search for meaning and the wonderful mystery of humanity.

In Gethan Dick’s Water in the Desert Fire in the Night, an underachieving millennial, a retired midwife and a charismatic Dubliner set out from London after the end of the world to cycle to a sanctuary in the southern Alps. This hotly anticipated debut is a dazzling, optimistic and philosophic novel about mothering, wolves, bicycles, midwifery, post-apocalyptic feminism, gold, hunger and hope. Gethan Dick’s creative practice is in text-based and co-created visual art. She lives in Marseille working as one half of visual-arts duo gethan&myles with her partner, Myles Quin.

In beautiful, soaring prose, Patrick Holloway’s The Language of Remembering asks how we connect to the people we love. Returning from Brazil with his wife and daughter, Oisín is looking to rebuild a life in Ireland and reconnect with his mother, Brigid, who has early onset Alzheimer’s. As her condition deteriorates, she starts to speak Irish, the language of her youth. As their past traumas are exposed, mother and son begin to understand what has shaped them, and who they really are. Patrick Holloway writes fiction and poetry and edits the literary journal, The Four Faced Liar. His awards include the Bath Short Story Award and the Molly Keane Creative Writing Prize, He was the recipient of the Paul McVeigh Residency, 2023.

In conversation with poet and co-host of the Books For Breakfast podcast, Enda Wyley.

Duration: 1 hour