Noir is the Colour

Your heart is beating, your palms are sweaty. You hear a creak in the floorboards, the eerie howl of a lone dog. You shiver, you sweat. But mostly, you keep turning the pages, reading as fast as you can, while contemplating with dread the ever-approaching end. You are in the throes of perdition, in thrall to a dangerously addictive and singularly powerful genre: Noir. It comes in many shades – Nordic, neo, Tartan – but it reigns supreme. To celebrate the renaissance of the genre and help you discover its French masters, we are happy to launch our new series of literary talks, ‘Noir Is the Colour’, featuring the best French authors of crime-fiction and noir-writing in conversation with their counterparts from the UK and Europe. The launch event will take place in the newly renovated library and will star Prix Goncourt winner Pierre Lemaitre in conversation with King of Crime John Harvey, who, on the occasion of the publication of their respective novels Irène (MacLehose Press) and Darkness, Darkness (Random House), will uncover the codes and challenges of noir-writing.

Barry Forshaw (journalist, author of British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia and Euro Noir released on 29 May) will chair the event.

£10, conc. £8, students £5 | in English