Three finalists in this year’s Orwell Prizes come together at Foyles Charing Cross Road for a discussion about the art of political storytelling and the urgent themes raised in their shortlisted work.

Megan Nolan was born in 1990 in Waterford, Ireland. Her latest novel, Ordinary Human Failings, is set in nineties London and follows an ambitious reporter as he investigates an Irish family implicated in an atrocious crime. Ordinary Human Failings, also longlisted for the Women’s Prize, is shortlisted for the Orwell Foundation’s Political Fiction Book Prize.

Alpa Shah was raised in Nairobi, studied at Cambridge and completed her PhD at the LSE, where she now teaches anthropology. Her latest book, The Incarcerations, takes a shocking case of sixteen human rights defenders imprisoned in India without credible evidence or a trial, and unravels the larger state of democratic crisis in modern India. Shah’s work is shortlisted for the Orwell Foundation’s Political Writing Book Prize.

Yaroslav Trofimov is the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of The Wall Street Journal and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for two consecutive years, in 2022 and 2023. Our Enemies will Vanish, his expertly-told, eye-witness account of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is shortlisted for the Orwell Foundation’s Political Writing Book Prize.

The discussion will be chaired by journalist and author Christina Lamb, Chief Foreign Correspondent for the Sunday Times.

The event will be followed by a book signing. Doors will open from 6:45pm.

Alpa Shah who is award-winning of author of The Incarcerations, is currently a Professor of Anthropology at London School of Economics and will be the next Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford University with a Fellowship at All Souls College.

Sushant Singh, Lecturer at the South Asian Studies Council of Yale University, will introduce the discussion.

Location: Amphithéâtre Erignac - 13, rue de l'Université - 75007 Paris

2024 is a year of elections around the world, with record numbers of first time voters and almost half the global population casting their votes. Yet each nation has its own shifting concept of what the democratic process entails. A distinguished panel scrutinises the civic attitudes and constitutional safeguards that ensure true democracy.

Part of the Jaipur Literary Festival which runs from the 7th to the 9th of July 2024.

Voting is currently underway in seven rounds in India. But whether the elections are free and fair in the world’s largest democracy is open to question as never before.

In a panel discussion at the Frontline Club, Alpa will be joined by Meenakshi Ravi, Executive Producer at Al Jazeera, and editor of The India Report; and Sonia Faleiro, the founder and programme director of South Asia Speaks. Sonia’s book, 'The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing'; was nominated for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize among other awards.

Chair David Loyn, author of Frontline, The Long War, and visiting senior fellow at King’s College London.

"Things have improved over many years[in India]– life expectancy, for example – but there are these deep problems you mention behind these headline numbers. But this isn’t a story that the West wants to hear"

Alpa Shah is a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, specialising in Indian and Nepalese minority and indigenous groups. Her fieldwork embedded her in Maoist rebel movements in Eastern India during counterinsurgency operations and involved her disguising herself as a man within a guerrilla platoon.

As India’s April general election results reverberate around the world, The Incarcerations offers a sweeping, searing investigation into Indian fascism, cyber warfare and tech surveillance versus minority activism and resistance. Alpa Shah exposes the personal stories and shocking truth behind the arrests of the Bhima Koregaon 16 – professors, lawyers, journalists, poets fighting for the rights of India’s three main minorities – Adivasi, Dalits and Muslims – who have been imprisoned, without credible evidence and without trial. The case challenges India’s freedom of speech, of movement; the right to land, religion, language, and culture.

Preti Taneja is Director of NCLA and Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University.

We are threatened by wars, inequality, new technologies and climate catastrophe, and we need our human rights now more than ever. At this year’s annual Wollstonecraft Society Lecture, we are joined by Shami Chakrabarti, lawyer, parliamentarian and leading British human rights defender.

Speakers include Conor Gearty, and Bee Rowlatt.

Chair: Alpa Shah.

Photo courtesy of Maya Ikenberry/The Daily Northwestern.

Read a summary of the event.

Alpa Shah discusses her new book The Incarcerations.

Shah’s lecture is based on her forthcoming book The Incarcerations: BK16 and the Search for Democracy in India, which examines the 2018 violence and arrests of 16 human rights defenders (the BK-16)—professors, lawyers, journalists, and poets—who were labeled as Maoist terrorist and accused of inciting violence and plotting against Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. Liu Institute faculty fellow Aidan Seale-Feldman, assistant professor of anthropology, will moderate.

As India’s elections reverberate around the world, The Incarcerations pulls back the curtain on Indian democracy in a sweeping, searing investigation into Indian fascism, cyber warfare and tech surveillance and democratic rights activism and resistance.

Tickets available here: https://thebritishlibraryculturalevents.seetickets.com/event/the-incarcerations-and-the-search-for-democracy/british-library/2925706