A Collected Books and Gala Durham Co-Production
The bestselling author of Our Wives Under the Sea comes to Durham with the paperback publication of Private Rites. Join us for an evening with Julia Armfield as she discusses this stunning, unsettling novel following three sisters navigating queer love and faith at the end of the world.
It’s been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves and the cities have retreated to higher storeys. Old places have been lost. Arcane rituals and religions have crept back into practice.
Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their estranged father dies. A famous architect revered for making the new world navigable, he had long cut himself off from public life. They find themselves uncertain of how to grieve his passing when everything around them seems to be ending anyway.
As the sisters come together to clear the grand glass house that is the pinnacle of his legacy, they begin to sense that the magnetic influence of their father lives on through it. Soon it becomes clear that others have also taken an interest in both his estate and in them, and that perhaps their inheritance may not be theirs alone.
Julia Armfield’s work has been published in Granta, The White Review and Best British Short Stories 2019 and 2021. She is the author of salt slow, a collection of short stories, which was longlisted for the Polari Prize 2020 and the Edge Hill Prize 2020. Her debut novel, Our Wives Under The Sea, won the Polari Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Foyles Fiction Book of the Year Award 2022.
You can purchase a copy of Private Rites in advance for £7.50 when purchasing a ticket for this event.
Tickets
£10 (£17.50 with a copy of Private Rites)
