Philosophical Fiction Book Club

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

This meeting will be held in person in the Prince of Wales pub near Covent Garden. There is also an online session held on Thursday if you are not in London or are unable to attend in-person.

This month we'll explore our year's theme of 'quest' through the lens of self-understanding, self-transformation, conformity and freedom with Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Expect themes of personal identity, social restrictions, gender and family as we discuss the titular Orlando's unexpected sex-shifting journey from Renaissance nobleman to early 20th century woman.

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm, but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from goodreads.com:

Virginia Woolf's Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is now a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

This month we'll explore our year's theme of 'quest' through the lens of self-understanding, self-transformation, conformity and freedom with Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Expect themes of personal identity, social restrictions, gender and family as we discuss the titular Orlando's unexpected sex-shifting journey from Renaissance nobleman to early 20th century woman.

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm, but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from goodreads.com:

Virginia Woolf's Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is now a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

This meeting will be held in person in the Prince of Wales pub near Covent Garden. There is also an online session held on Thursday if you are not in London or are unable to attend in-person.

This month, we're going on a mission of persuasion with Genly Ai - an envoy of a galactic civilisation as he tries to understand the inhabitants of the planet he has been sent to recruit. Differences of biology, gender, religion and philosophy separate Genly from the Gethenians and all feature as just some of the themes we will explore when discussing this book.

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm, but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from goodreads.com:

A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

This month, we're going on a mission of persuasion with Genly Ai - an envoy of a galactic civilisation as he tries to understand the inhabitants of the planet he has been sent to recruit. Differences of biology, gender, religion and philosophy separate Genly from the Gethenians and all feature as just some of the themes we will explore when discussing this book.

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm, but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from goodreads.com:
A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization.

But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.
Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.