This event brings together two writers impacted by the Soviet era, Poland’s Jacek Dehnel and Estonia’s Andrei Ivanov. Dehnel’s ‘Lala’ is a loosely autobiographical family saga, stretching from Kiev in 1875 to today’s Poland, depicts the 20th century through the stories Lala tells her grandson. It is an intimate and personal novel that also captures the sweep of world history. Ivanov’s ‘Hanuman’s Travels’, to be published in October, is also based on the author’s personal experiences, as he tells the stories of two asylum seekers, the Russian-Estonian narrator and the Indian protagonist, as they negotiate their daily lives in a Danish refugee camp and then on the road.
