ILFU Book Talk with Jeanette Winterson

On Monday evening 4 November the British author Jeanette Winterson will speak about her latest novel Frankisstein in the fifth ILFU Book Talk of this year. Frankisstein was recently selected for the Man Booker Prize 2019 longlist. 

Jeanette Winterson’s (1959) novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was her highly successful debut, described as ‘delicate, quirky, funny and intricate’ (Washington Post). For this semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story of a lesbian girl growing up in an English Pentecostal community she won the Whitbread Prize for best debut. Winterson subsequently adapted the novel into a BBC television drama which won a BAFTA award for Best Drama. In 1987 her novel The Passion was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. For her following book Sexing The Cherry (1989) she received the E.M. Forster Award. She also received an OBE for her services to literature in 2006.

Jeanette Winterson was in Utrecht before for the Belle van Zuylen lecture. This lecture has been organised since 2005 to keep the literary legacy of Utrecht’s internationally most renowned writer Belle van Zuylen alive and a source of inspiration.

After the Book Talk Jeanette Winterson will sign at the book stand. Friends of the House of Literature can purchase tickets at a discount (€ 10 instead of € 15). Interested in becoming our Friend? Please find more information here (in Dutch).

The story of Frankisstein

In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love – against their better judgement – with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with his mother again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere. Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryonics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead… but waiting to return to life.

But the scene is set in 1816, when nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley writes a story about creating a non-biological life-form. What will happen when homo sapiens is no longer the smartest being on the planet? Jeanette Winterson shows us how much closer we are to that future than we realise.

‘Only an author like Jeanette Winterson can breathe new live into a monster like Frankenstein’ –  NRC

‘Frankusstein turns out to be an inventive fest of a novel’ – Het Parool

‘A radical love story for right now, from one of the most gifted writers working today’ – New York Times

‘This reimagining of a classic shifts our view of humanity in a darkly entertaining style’ – The Guardian