Book Club – a magical walk with Davina Quinlivan

Event Information

The Tiger and the Green Man.

Join Davina Quinlivan, author of the extraordinary and compelling new book, Shalimar, on a walk through the parks, streets and myths of central London. 

And not forgetting the trees! 

How do the ghosts of our family’s past travel into the present? How do these fragments take root and shape how we navigate the world?

In her mid-twenties, after the death of her father, Davina Quinlivan left her family home in Hayes, west London, to begin a transitory life. She felt restless, never quite at home in the countryside, stuck between ‘Deep England’ and the technicolour memories and mythology of her family’s migration story. This lyrical story of migration, of returning home and making a home, is an assured debut by an exceptional new voice.

Trees fill Shalimar. Some of them even turn into ships and sail down a flooded high street in Davina’s beloved village in Hampshire.

Book Reviews

‘Davina Quinlivan is a writer of rare gentleness and insight: in Shalimar she winds us into the skein of her extended diasporic family, expressing the complexity of identity today. Deftly she weaves back and forth in time as she braids these memories, in a sustained, observant, poetic act of attention — and love. ‘ Marina Warner

‘Shalimar is dreamlike and full of sensation – Quinlivan constellates memory, place and belonging with such rarely-seen subtlety. This is a book that will weave its way into your thoughts and stay with you.’ Jessica J. Lee, author of Two Trees Make a Forest

‘A haunted archive, a casket full of memories, myths and dreams. A strange and startling cargo of ancestors brought vividly to life by a magician.’ Jeff Young, author of Costa shortlisted Ghost Town

Davina will be joined on this walk by Peter Fiennes, author of ‘Oak and Ash and Thorn’, ‘Footnotes’ and ‘A Thing of Beauty’.