Chairperson: Anne Mulhall
“Sarah Waters is one of the best storytellers alive today – sooner or later she’s going to be given the Booker”
Independent on Sunday
Sarah Waters found critical and popular success with her award-winning trilogy of page turning Victorian novels: the riproaring picaresque Tipping the Velvet (‘98); the darker, ghostly Affinity (‘99); and the Booker/Orange shortlisted gothic melodrama Fingersmith (‘02). In the same year Andrew Davies’s headline-grabbing adaptation of Tipping the Velvet transformed the author into a household name.
In a departure from her trademark Victoriana, Waters followed Fingersmith with The Night Watch – a tender and tragic novel set against the backdrop of wartime Britain. Again shortlisted for the Orange and Man Booker Prize, it went straight to number one in the bestseller charts.
Now, in her first visit to Dublin Writers Festival, Waters unveils her highly anticipated new novel, The Little Stranger – a chilling ghost story set in 1940s rural Warwickshire. In a dusty post-war summer, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the once grand Georgian house is now in decline. Its owners – mother, son and daughter – are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayres haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life?