Memories haunt the pages of the newest novels from Margarita García Robayo & Mike McCormack. Both leading literary lights at home and abroad, their latest works explore the fallibility of the human mind, set in worlds that hover just outside the bounds of reality.

In The Delivery, Robayo teases out the tenuous bonds of family that hold us together, or don’t. A woman’s ordinary life – full of half-hearted plans for the future and irritating Zooms with her sister – takes on an extraordinary cast with the arrival of an enormous, mysterious package which may or may not contain her estranged mother.

In This Plague of Souls, protagonist Nealon is released from jail only to return to his home and find it utterly empty – no heat or light, and no sign of his wife and child, just persistent phone calls from an unknown man who seems to know everything about Nealon’s life. Including what happened to his family.

Subtly sinister and laced with a strong sense of the uncanny, both novels explore the dangers of acknowledging the truth and the listening to the voices of the people who have the power to turn our lives upside down. Together they’ll discuss the tenuous nature of memory and how writing in the surreal, liminal spaces can help us make sense of the more difficult realities of life.

Margarita García Robayo is the author of several novels, a book of autobiographical essays, and several collections of short stories, including Worse Things, which obtained the prestigious Casa de las Américas Prize in 2014. The Delivery is her third book to appear in English after the very successful Fish Soup (selected by the TLS as one of the best fiction titles of 2018) and Holiday Heart (Winner of the English PEN Award).

Mike McCormack is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. His previous work includes Getting it in the Head, Notes from a Coma, which was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award, and Forensic Songs. Solar Bones won the Goldsmiths Prize, the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award for Best Novel and Best Book, and the Dublin Literary Award.

Presented in partnership with the Embassy of Colombia Dublin.