Brixton Book Jam organiser Zelda Rhiando has plenty to celebrate in November. The jam is back in a new venue and she has another novel hitting the shelves.
The jam will be at Off The Cuff next to Herne Hill station on Monday 4 November at 8pm, featuring Zelda herself and authors including Tony White, Daniel Tizon, Amelia Kyazze, poet Fran Lock, infant psychologist Caspar Addyman, and Dave McGowan.
The host will be “a very special guest”.
Zelda Rhiando’s new book Night Shift explores the boundaries of love and mortality.
It will be launched in Brixton on 6 November.
Set in shadowy corners of London, the novel unravels the relationship between Charlie, a mortuary technician, and Eva, a woman whose life is shrouded in mystery.
Charlie’s world is grounded in the realities of death, while Eva dances on the edge of sanity, her life intertwined with inexplicable events.
As Eva’s enigmatic existence begins to bleed into Charlie’s ordered world, questions arise: is Eva touched by madness or something more sinister?
In the face of love’s complexities and death’s certainty, Charlie must make a choice.
Night Shift examines themes of love, mortality, and the human struggle for connection in the face of life’s inevitabilities. Is love enough to fill the hole inside us?
Using meticulous on-location research, Zelda Rhiando portrays an authentic mortuary setting, while weaving a narrative that challenges readers to confront their own perceptions of life, death, and the spaces in between.
Literary consultant Jemima Hunt describes the novel as “brilliantly unsettling … written with poetic themes of love and loss alongside an urban Gothic vision of London – haunted by magpies.
“it’s a story that imagines a demonic world not so removed from the one we now live in.”
Night Shift continues the exploration of human relationships and existential themes seen in Zelda Rhiando’s earlier novels like Caposcripti and Fukushima Dreams.
With a noirish setting and a lone female protagonist struggling with dark external forces, it is a provocative exploration of urban life and the human psyche.
Night Shift will be available in bookshops and online from 7 November at £10.99.
