We’re thrilled to be welcoming Natasha Brown and Nataliya Deleva to the shop to discuss their incredible novels ASSEMBLY and ARRIVAL – two beautifully written books which explore themes of trauma and identity.

About the books:

Natasha Brown – Assembly

Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Step out into a world of Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.

The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend’s family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can’t escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?

Assembly is a story about the stories we live within – those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers. And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life.

Nataliya Deleva – Arrival

Arrival is an exploration of the ripple effects of domestic abuse. The story follows a young woman fleeing her home country and trying to rebuild her life, after she has suffered domestic violence at the hands of an alcoholic father. Prompted by her therapist, the unnamed protagonist starts processing the abuse experienced in her childhood while also pondering what it means to be a mother when consumed by trauma. The novel bends form to accommodate the narrator’s scattered mind and her attempt to assemble a version of herself through fragments and stitches of memories, borrowed conversations and minutiae that linger and haunt. Infused with love and determination and interwoven with folk tales and rituals, Arrival depicts the ways in which we are resilient, capable of carving our own paths and reimagining our lives.

About the authors:

Natasha Brown is a British novelist. She is a 2019 London Writers Award recipient, a 2022 Burgess Fellow at the University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing, and a Women’s Prize x Good Housekeeping Futures Award finalist. Her debut novel Assembly was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Art Seidenbaum Award. She is currently a Writer in Residence at the Centre for New Writing.

Nataliya Deleva was born in Bulgaria and now lives in London. Her debut novel, Four Minutes. was originally published in Bulgaria (Janet 45, 2017), where the book was awarded Best Debut Novel and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year (2018). It has since been translated into German (eta Verlag, 2018), English (Open Letter Books, 2021) and Polish (Wydawnictwo EZOP, 2021). Nataliya’s short fiction, reviews and essays have appeared in Words Without Borders, Asymptote, Empty Mirror, Granta Bulgaria, and the anthology Stories from the 90s (ICU Publishing, 2019) among others.

Doors: 6.30, event starts: 6.45

Tickets are £3 or free when purchasing a copy of either book. ASSEMBLY and ARRIVAL will also be available to purchase on the night and Natasha and Nataliya will be signing copies after the talk. If you would like a signed copy but cannot make the event, please contact us on 0161 274 3331 or manchester@blackwell.co.uk and we can arrange this for you.