Faith, Feathers & Human Skin: introducing The Puffin

Michelle Lovric is coming to Southwark Cathedral on Monday 26 October to talk about her new novel, The Puffin. She'll be joined by Mark Oakley, Dean of Southwark Cathedral, in the cathedral's library. The evening celebrates the book's release, and it's a standalone sequel to her earlier The Book of Human Skin.

The Puffin is set in Venice in 1817 and follows a fingerless nobleman who seizes a puffin that arrives mysteriously at the Rialto Market. His matrimonial tragedies and the bird's fervid character set the creature on a collision course with the best and worst of humanity. It's described as a genre-defying literary epic that fuses the politics of coercion, surrender and resistance with a subversive take on faith, language and consciousness. The story ranges from 19th-century Venice to the New World and the Lofoten Islands, with a cast of unforgettable characters, not all of them human.

Lovric was born in Sydney and now lives between London and Venice. She's published eleven novels set in those two cities and is known for the gothic darkness of her humour and her unflinching explorations of faith in extremis. Her work often touches on medical curiosities, like Holy Anorexia and anthropodermic bibliopegy — the practice of binding books in human skin, which is where the title of the evening, Faith, Feathers & Human Skin, comes from.

The talk runs from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm in the library at Southwark Cathedral, SE1 9DA. Doors open at 6:15 pm, and the event starts at 6:30 pm. Tickets start from £5.